tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/networking-379/articlesNetworking – The Conversation2019-07-17T11:22:29Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1204022019-07-17T11:22:29Z2019-07-17T11:22:29ZHow immigrants give American companies a powerful boost against Chinese rivals<p>The <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/06/trumps-trade-war-with-china-is-changing-the-world/592411/">ongoing trade war</a> is the most visible front in America’s struggle with China for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unrivaled-America-Superpower-Cornell-Security/dp/1501724789/ref=sr_1_1?crid=251ZI3QJF29ZW&amp;keywords=michael+beckley+unrivaled&amp;qid=1563300672&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=Michael+Beckley%2Caps%2C121&amp;sr=1-1">global influence</a>. Oddly, it may be immigration policy, as much as tariffs and trade deals, that determines which country prevails.</p>
<p>That’s because American competitiveness in foreign markets is a key battlefield in the struggle. And while the U.S. has long been <a href="https://data.oecd.org/fdi/fdi-stocks.htm">the leading source</a> of foreign investment in developing countries, China has emerged as an increasingly assertive player. With its <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/belt-and-road-initiative-38964">Belt and Road Initiative</a>, China is using investment as <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative">a tool to extend its political influence</a> throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. </p>
<p>But as it turns out, immigrants – a group that President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/politics/trump-twitter-squad-congress.html">frequently denigrates</a> – provide the U.S. with a surprisingly powerful competitive advantage, as <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/10011255/investing_in_the_homeland">my research</a> has shown. And policies that limit the number of immigrants who can come to the U.S. could be detrimental to America’s competitiveness in the long run. </p>
<h2>A nation of immigrants</h2>
<p>While America is a nation of immigrants, <a href="https://qz.com/1163632/china-still-has-the-smallest-share-of-incoming-migrants-in-the-world/">China is not</a>. Chinese companies have few immigrants to hire, and this hurts them. </p>
<p>There are only a million foreign-born residents in China, <a href="https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017_Highlights.pdf">compared with 50 million in the U.S.</a>, even though China’s population is four times larger.</p>
<p>Whether an American company wants to invest in India, Nigeria, Armenia or Guatemala, there is a flourishing immigrant community in the U.S. that businesses can tap to help them navigate challenging social and political environments. Few Chinese companies can do the same. </p>
<p>This gives American companies a competitive edge. Specifically, immigrants’ social and political ties to their home countries, combined with the professional connections they make in the U.S., allow immigrants to bridge the gap between American companies and valuable networks in developing countries. </p>
<h2>Brothers-in-law and childhood friends</h2>
<p>In many developing countries, <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/682150">formal institutions like courts are weak</a>, and personal relationships play a large role in both business and politics. </p>
<p>If you want to get a permit quickly, you need a brother-in-law in the permit office or a childhood friend who is now a politician. Thriving in emerging markets requires knowing and trusting the right people. These can be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2009.24">hard relationships for foreign companies to develop</a>. </p>
<p>Many turn to local fixers to navigate challenging environments. But establishing trust with a local you just met is hard. A fixer you can’t trust is a fixer you can’t use. </p>
<p>This is where immigrants come in. Immigrants often have the same local connections as any other fixer – many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8490087">retain strong ties</a> to childhood friends and extended family back home. At the same time, they also build strong, trustworthy ties to colleagues and friends in their <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6200969">new country of settlement</a>. This makes immigrants valuable brokers. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The author explains his research.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Investing in the Homeland</h2>
<p>In my new book “<a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/10011309/investing_in_the_homeland">Investing in the Homeland</a>,” a team of researchers I led interviewed the managers of over 400 multinational companies doing business in the Philippines and the country of Georgia. </p>
<p>Georgia and the Philippines are excellent cases because they are both typical of emerging markets: profit opportunities abound, but so do risks, including corruption, red tape and an <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/298/docs/2017_3_Kingsley_and_Graham_JIBS_Information_Voids.pdf">unpredictable policy environment</a>. </p>
<p>We gathered information on the strength of companies’ social networks, including their ties to other businesses, how frequently they interacted with government officials and whether current or former government officials sit on their boards of directors. We also assessed strategy, especially how companies managed political challenges and resolved disputes with counterparts.</p>
<p>Our data revealed that the companies owned or managed by migrants – regardless of nationality – were better connected than other foreign businesses and that these connections helped them survive in challenging environments. </p>
<p>For example, migrant-affiliated companies were five times more likely to report resolving business disputes outside the formal court system. Instead they turned to well-connected friends and family members to broker an efficient resolution. This is critical, given how <a href="https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/data/exploretopics/enforcing-contracts">slow and unpredictable</a> courts in developing countries can be. </p>
<p>According to one manager in the Philippines, if a supplier delivers a faulty shipment of goods, a well-connected company doesn’t have to go to court to get its money back. It threatens to tell everyone in its extended network. The threat of reputational damage and lost business can be enough to enforce the contract – and a lot faster and cheaper than a court battle.</p>
<p>Our research shows that migrant-affiliated companies are also four times more likely to have a current or former government official serving on their board of directors and were more than twice as likely to use their owners’ or managers’ personal relationships as a tool for handling government relations. </p>
<p>These relationship-based strategies pay off: Migrant-affiliated businesses were almost twice as likely to claim they had achieved success in influencing government policy in the host country.</p>
<h2>Being high-skilled helps</h2>
<p>Of course, not all immigrants have valuable social ties. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iref.2018.09.007">New research by economist Ana Cuadros and her co-authors</a> shows that an influx of migrants with management skills promotes foreign investment to flow into their homeland, but the same is not true for lower-skilled ones. So the more wealthy, educated immigrants the U.S. admits, the more potential brokers there are for American businesses to hire. </p>
<p>The H-1B visas available to high-skilled workers and the EB-5 visas for immigrant entrepreneurs who launch large businesses are most likely to attract the type of immigrants who can serve as brokers for American companies. Thus far, such visas have been <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-visas/trump-administration-denying-delaying-more-foreign-skilled-worker-requests-idUSKCN1QB2K5">more restricted</a> under Trump than President Barack Obama. But the Trump administration has proposed <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/merit-based-immigration-trump-proposal-immigrant-selection">moving toward a points-based system</a>. </p>
<p>An unfortunate side effect is that this would reduce the number of visas issued for family reunification. While any overhaul of the immigration system has to grapple with these moral tradeoffs, there is a strong economic case for increasing high-skilled immigration. </p>
<p>Immigrants may just hold the key for the U.S. to outmaneuver China in the struggle for global economic supremacy – as long as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/07/15/741827580/go-back-where-you-came-from-the-long-rhetorical-roots-of-trump-s-racist-tweets">Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric</a> doesn’t get in the way. </p>
<p><em>Sarah Orsborn, a research assistant in the <a href="http://uscspec.org">Security and Political Economy Lab</a> and undergraduate at USC Dornsife, co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin A.T. Graham&#39;s research lab has received funding from Facebook to support the training and mentoring of undergraduate research assistants and to support lab research projects unrelated to this article. Facebook funding was received after the work on Investing in the Homeland was completed.</span></em></p>While the US is a nation of immigrants, China is not. That's a huge competitive advantage when doing business in emerging markets.Benjamin A.T. Graham, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/968542018-05-28T19:53:34Z2018-05-28T19:53:34ZResearch shows networking is painful, but it can be a lot better<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220407/original/file-20180525-51127-1c55gy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Smiling on the outside, struggling on the inside. Networking can be painful.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is it enough to throw a group of people together, give them a name badge and hope for the best? Research suggests it isn’t. </p>
<p>Forming and maintaining strong professional relationships is a key component of career success. These <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/19416520.2010.494827">networks</a> help individuals to access resources, information and support. But people often <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/05/learn-to-love-networking">hate</a> networking. </p>
<p>Strong networks provide a <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2667127?casa_token=MANqBaxyjhsAAAAA:_FzEb6Nagsy3BMVVYhHaIoN3qR7jYkiKPJk-KQcYZHmWngiiLfsQZ9AYy9zLA9O58kSzcKPOJDSJYRCxoJjSEnbbq9NZ3K9yY-v4sA0ODPg0JGvg5Cs&amp;seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">range of benefits</a> including learning, sources of information, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2009-00697-007">salary growth</a>, innovation and a means of getting things done. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2393655?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Research</a> shows that people with diverse contacts are able to access information that helps them generate better ideas. </p>
<p>Building professional relationships <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/05/learn-to-love-networking">improves</a> both quality of work and job satisfaction. As the landscape of work changes rapidly, employees are making more frequent career moves, which means that networking is a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Suzanne_Janasz/publication/240696871_Learning_The_Art_of_Networking_A_Critical_Skill_for_Enhancing_Social_Capital_and_Career_Success/links/56ac40c308aeaa696f2a0ebb.pdf">critical competency</a>.</p>
<h2>Networking often doesn’t work</h2>
<p>Despite intending to meet new people in networking settings, we often don’t act on these plans. A <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2189/asqu.52.4.558">study</a> of MBA students at a specially organised networking event found that while 95% of attendees wanted to meet new contacts, they spent over half of the time with people they already knew.</p>
<p>For many, the prospect of networking is as appealing as public speaking or a trip to the dentist. In fact, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0001839214554990">research</a> has shown that networking for the purpose of advancing our professional goals can make us actually feel dirty. </p>
<p>And trying to make new connections isn’t easy. <a href="https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.1100.0587">Studies</a> have shown that we tend to gravitate to people we already know, see often, or who are similar to us. This can be challenging for people trying to create new networks. It also explains why some employees feel isolated when trying to join established networks. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3157260">study</a> demonstrated that traditional networking in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields can be gendered. Women make 42% fewer contacts, spend 48% less time talking to them and make 25% fewer LinkedIn connections than their male counterparts. </p>
<h2>What networking success looks like</h2>
<p>So what can be done to increase the value and success of networking? The benefits of networking are influenced by the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/41429345?casa_token=P0m4HmeDKpIAAAAA:Gbv9ZqhpVR6DL8dQboD4AOypVpbVTLdKad2omReL_h18XOdRhvUpzHrYtbpPtO1TQ900300cCQmK0kAlKo8UH0UZvOSCUvpJjh6sxRD1DjlNPBdwgbo&amp;seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents">dynamics and nature</a> of the network. </p>
<p>Emerging <a href="http://my.aom.org/Program2017/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=14802">research</a> is highlighting the interaction of the role of trust, the place and space where these events occur, and the role of hosts, to increase the effectiveness of networking. Previous <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0001839212474272">studies</a> show physical proximity to others is important in building new relationships. Employees are often encouraged to relocate to regional economic clusters (Silicon Valley, for example), join incubators and coworking spaces, and find ways to be close to other entrepreneurs, investors and customers.</p>
<p>But for people to form new connections, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3157260">research</a> indicates that social, not just physical barriers, need to be reduced. </p>
<p>One of the solutions to this are structured events to reduce these barriers and decrease search efforts to find new networks and opportunities. A recent example of this was a <a href="http://statements.qld.gov.au/Statement/2018/5/14/myriad-air-lands-in-queensland-ahead-of-myriad-festival-2018">chartered flight</a> from Silicon Valley to the Myriad entrepreneurship festival in Brisbane. The idea of the mid-air networking flight was to create opportunities for established entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders to network with emerging entrepreneurs, students and business people. </p>
<p>But for networking to succeed it needs to be more than one-off events. <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3157260">Studies</a> show that individuals who receive organised introductions make a far greater number of new contacts, and make far stronger connections with these contacts, than those who received no introduction.</p>
<p>These findings emphasise the importance of creating opportunities for both employees and entrepreneurs to connect, beyond just bringing them together in a particular setting or event. <a href="http://my.aom.org/Program2017/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=14802">In my research</a>, I found that the role of a host in business incubators and coworking spaces was critical in helping to identify and create opportunities to form new and diverse networks.</p>
<p>The hosts of these spaces appear to play a pivotal role in a network. They identify not only those who should connect, but also ensure they are at the right stage to take advantage of the introduction. The host is also able to connect people to the right information and resources. </p>
<p>The success of this role appears to rest heavily on the trust embedded in these established networks. The person who is being asked to connect is more open to the meeting, knowing that the host will have determined that the meeting will be worthwhile for both parties. </p>
<p>Entrepreneurs rely on social ties in building new ventures, and employees rely on effective workplace networks to be innovative and perform better. These new studies show that if the physical setting as well as clear strategies to facilitate new connections and networks are right, then networking wouldn’t be such a pain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96854/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Libby Sander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the physical setting, as well as clear strategies to facilitate new connections and networks are right, then networking wouldn't be such a pain.Libby Sander, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bond Business School, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/886232018-04-27T10:44:15Z2018-04-27T10:44:15ZInternet openness pits collaborative history against competitive future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216026/original/file-20180423-94160-wuj2ns.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two views of the internet collide in the net neutrality debate.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/two-male-hands-about-shake-over-72451381">The Conversation composite from Malyugin and AAR Studios/Shutterstock.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The debate about how open the internet should be to free expression – and how much companies should be able to restrict, or charge for, communication speeds – boils down to a conflict between the internet’s collaborative beginnings and its present commercialized form.</p>
<p>The internet originated in the late 1960s in the <a href="https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/">U.S. Department of Defense’s ARPANET project</a>, whose goal was to enable government <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET">researchers around the country to communicate</a> and coordinate with each other. When the general public was allowed online in the early 1990s, intellectuals saw an opportunity to include all mankind in the collaborative online community that had developed. As internet rights pioneer John Barlow wrote, “<a href="https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence">We are creating a world that all may enter</a> without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs.” </p>
<p>Even today, many of the people who contribute to the technical evolution of the network continue to view the internet as a place to share human knowledge for self-improvement and the betterment of society. As a result, <a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-net-neutrality-10-essential-reads-71848">many people are troubled</a> when internet companies try to charge more money for faster access to digital commodities like streaming videos.</p>
<p>As a researcher in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lFnZ7RkAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">computer networks and security</a>, I note that the problems are not just philosophical: The internet is based on technologies that complicate the task of commercializing the online world.</p>
<h2>The ‘true’ internet</h2>
<p>In practice, the designers of the technology at the foundation of the internet were not really attempting to enforce any particular philosophy. One of them, David Clark, wrote in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/52324.52336">1988 paper</a> that early internet architects did consider commercial features, such as accounting. Being able to keep track of how much data – and which data – each user is sending is very useful, if those users are to be charged for connectivity. However, most of those commercial features didn’t get included because they weren’t needed for a government and military network.</p>
<p>These decisions decades ago echo through the years: There is no effective and universal way to distinguish between different types of internet traffic, for example, to give some priority or charge extra for others. If whoever produces the traffic actively tries to evade restrictions, separating content gets even more difficult.</p>
<h2>Using old tools in new ways</h2>
<p>One of the few sources of information about how internet companies handle this challenge comes from <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-fccs-proposed-internet-rules-may-spell-trouble-ahead-82561">recent research at Northeastern University</a>. It suggests that they may be using a technique called “<a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-deep-packet-inspection-works">deep packet inspection</a>” to identify, for example, video traffic from a particular streaming service. Then internet companies can decide at what speed to deliver that traffic, whether to throttle it or give it priority.</p>
<p>But deep packet inspection was not developed for this type of commercial discrimination. In fact, it was developed in the internet security community as a way of identifying and blocking malicious communications. Its goal is to make the internet more secure, not to simplify billing. So it’s not a particularly good accounting tool.</p>
<p>Like many other researchers working on deep packet inspection, I learned that its algorithms <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/319709.319710">may fail to correctly identify different types of traffic</a> – and that it can be fooled by a data sender dedicated to avoiding detection. In the context of internet security, these limitations are acceptable, because it’s impossible to prevent all attacks, so the main goal is to make them more difficult.</p>
<p>But deep packet inspection is not reliable enough for internet service providers to use it to discriminate between types of traffic. Inaccuracies may cause them to throttle traffic they didn’t intend to, or not to throttle data they meant to slow down. </p>
<h2>Breaking the cycle</h2>
<p>The Northeastern team found that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2940136.2940140">T-Mobile seems to throttle YouTube videos</a>, but not ones from Vimeo – likely because the company does not know how to identify Vimeo traffic. As the researchers pointed out, this could lead sites like YouTube to disguise their traffic so it also does not get identified. The peril comes if that pushes internet companies to step up their deep packet inspection efforts. The resulting cat-and-mouse game could affect traffic from other sources.</p>
<p>As internet companies experiment with what they can achieve within their technical limitations, these sorts of problems are likely to become more common, at least in the short term. In the long term, of course, their influence could force <a href="https://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-html">changes in the technical underpinnings</a> of the internet. But, in my view, the internet’s current architecture means throttling and traffic discrimination will be at least as difficult – if not more so – as it is today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88623/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorenzo De Carli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The internet developed as a place for open collaboration; there are technical limits on its transformation into a commercial marketplace.Lorenzo De Carli, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/887862017-12-17T10:19:05Z2017-12-17T10:19:05ZAccess to mobile phones won't magically fix youth unemployment in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198119/original/file-20171207-28930-m6crmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For some, the mobile phone revolution has produced new work opportunities. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many in the international development community view technology –not least, mobile phones – as a possible panacea for Africa’s youth unemployment crisis. Their use is sharply <a href="https://qz.com/748354/smartphone-use-has-more-than-doubled-in-africa-in-two-years/">on the rise</a>. Mobile phones reduce the need for physical travel, allow rapid access to information about job openings and enable people to contact potential employers. They can be used to help run more efficient businesses. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.dur.ac.uk/child.phones/">Research</a> my colleagues and I conducted as part of a study funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development found that some young people in Africa are using mobile phones successfully to access or create employment. But mobile phones are failing many more young people in their search for employment and livelihoods.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dur.ac.uk/child.phones/">The study</a>, conducted in Ghana, Malawi and South Africa, suggests some important reasons why phones may be unable to help young people fulfil their employment dreams. Our findings demonstrate that phone connections are not enough. Connectivity is only useful if it opens up access to employment opportunities that will pay a living wage. </p>
<p>That’s the crux of the problem: there simply aren’t enough quality jobs available. Ghana and Malawi have extensive informal sectors which have long provided at least some work for young people. Mobile phones have opened up some new opportunities in the informal sector – young people sell airtime or repair handsets, or may grow their service and trading businesses through the phone. </p>
<p>South Africa, meanwhile, has failed to grow a vibrant informal sector since apartheid ended in 1994. Its young people tend to be looking for work in the formal sector, and most do not have the employability skills that might make mobile phones useful to achieving this goal. </p>
<p>In reality the extent to which the mobile phone can support and sustain real improvement in young lives is depressingly finite unless significant interventions occur – particularly in the education and technology sectors. </p>
<h2>Informal versus formal sector</h2>
<p>Our respondents were aged between nine and 25 and came from 24 diverse sites from poor urban neighbourhoods to remote rural locations. We conducted more than 1500 interviews face to face and in focus groups, and followed this up with a questionnaire survey of about 4500 young people.</p>
<p>In Ghana and Malawi – as in much of sub-Saharan Africa – most young people are exposed to work in the informal sector at an early age. There are many problems with this. But limited inputs into the informal sector can bring significant benefits. </p>
<p>It can help children to build a repertoire of knowledge and skills that will later help them to obtain an income. It’s also a way to consolidate social networks young people can draw on when they are subsequently searching for paid work.</p>
<p>Over the last decade, mobile phones have brought potential and new flexibility into young people’s lives. This is especially true for those who are entrepreneurial. Some of the people we interviewed earn a living directly linked to phones: selling airtime, charging and mending phones. This is often short-term, low paid work but can help them to earn money for further training. They also used their phones extensively to build up personal contacts in key support networks while looking for jobs.</p>
<p>The situation in South Africa is very different. In the poor urban neighbourhoods where we conducted the study, virtually every household where we interviewed young people owns at least one phone and smart phone access is growing rapidly. But the devices have had remarkably little positive impact on young people’s livelihoods.</p>
<p>Work opportunities of any kind for low-skilled youth are very sparse, and especially so in the absence of a vibrant informal sector. This is a historical legacy stemming back to bans on informal enterprise during the apartheid era. Unemployed school leavers tend to concentrate on trying to find low-skill jobs in the formal sector. Most formal jobs, however, require higher skill levels; so competition for low-skill jobs is very intense and few young people succeed in their search for work.</p>
<p>Poor young people in South Africa also lack access to productive social networks that could provide them with information about the formal job market. Few have had the opportunity to gain work experience during their school days, which would help them to acquire the key skills and networking opportunities that might promote employability. Many look for volunteer posts which they hope will give them the experience and skills to find paid work. </p>
<p>All of this emphasises a fundamental difference in youth employment stakes between Ghana and Malawi on the one hand, and South Africa on the other: the role of the informal sector. In the first two countries the informal sector dominates. Despite its very many deficiencies, it provides a training ground for learning basic skills and a labour absorption mechanism. </p>
<p>In South Africa the near absence of informal sector openings arguably denies low-skilled young people any early work experience and limits their subsequent access to paid work opportunities.</p>
<p>Access to mobile phones cannot change this reality. Bigger changes at a societal level are necessary.</p>
<h2>Moving on?</h2>
<p>Both the overall basket and the scope of local livelihood opportunities open to young people will have to grow exponentially, across the continent, if mobile phones are to realise their potential in local employment arenas. </p>
<p>Researchers at the <a href="https://www.saldru.uct.ac.za/">Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit</a> and the Children’s Institute who were involved in this project suggest various interventions that might help, particularly in South Africa.</p>
<p>For instance, travel vouchers could help young people who currently don’t have enough money to move from deprived areas to areas with labour demand. And, given the stronger demand for skilled over unskilled labour, there’s obviously an urgent need for skills development and training at secondary, post-secondary and workplace level. There are some opportunities to build experience through the country’s public works programme, <a href="http://www.nyda.gov.za/National-Youth-Service-Programme/Pages/default.aspx">National Youth Service</a> and NGO volunteering. But these need to incorporate stronger skills training for young people from poor communities.</p>
<p>South Africa could also consider extending social assistance to the chronically unemployed through a basic income grant or a comprehensive support package for poor youth. This would make sense when many young people are currently trapped in poverty, often exacerbated by the need to contribute to their family incomes – a reality which could hinder their ability to invest in training or business expansion.</p>
<p><em>The full paper on which this article is based is <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jid.3340/full">available here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gina Porter, the PI on this project, and her research collaborators Kate Hampshire, Albert Abane, Alister Munthali, Augustine Tanle, Elsbeth Robson, Mac Mashiri, Ariane De Lannoy, have received funding for the research from the UK Economic and Research Council and the Department for International Development, project ES/J018082/1.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ariane De Lannoy was part of the research team led by Gina Porter and received funding from UK ESRC DFID for this work.</span></em></p>The extent to which mobile phones can support and sustain real improvement in young lives is depressingly finite unless significant interventions occur.Gina Porter, Senior Research Fellow, Durham UniversityAriane De Lannoy, Senior Researcher: Poverty and Inequality Initiative, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859302017-10-25T13:23:49Z2017-10-25T13:23:49ZUnraveling what's holding back women economists in academia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190832/original/file-20171018-32345-n9pxlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Data shows gender disparities in networking.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When it comes to academic success female scientists are – on average – usually behind their male counterparts. They receive <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2014/08/equally-productive-women-are-tenured-less">academic tenure</a> less often and win <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/10/12/women-nobel-prizes">fewer awards</a>. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20141734">gender gap</a> exists in the academic discipline of economics, too. In 2016, <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/cswep/survey">less than 15%</a> of all economics professors were women. </p>
<p><a href="http://blog.central-places.net/">Data</a> I’ve collected and worked with during my PhD shows that women are also less central in the social network of informal collaboration. This refers to the process among academics of providing feedback and helping other authors to improve their work through comments and engagements. Such networks enable the global flow of knowledge, which is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-plugging-into-well-connected-colleagues-can-help-research-fly-71223">crucial</a> for research. </p>
<p>My data suggests that men’s attitudes might be part of what’s keeping women in a subfield of economics from occupying a central position in the social network of informal collaboration.</p>
<h2>Fewer women</h2>
<p>The data focuses on financial economics, the field that deals with financial crises, inflation, banking, and corporate finance. </p>
<p>The dataset contains 14,529 researchers whose names appear in published research articles in major financial economics journals between 1997 and 2011. They are either authors, acknowledged commenters, or both. An acknowledged commenter is a person who advised the authors and helped guide or inform their thinking; their assistance is noted in the acknowledgements section of any journal article or book.</p>
<p>Across all the years, only 18% of the authors are female. This disparity between male and female authors alone exemplifies the gender gap. It’s also striking that female commenters only account for 11% of the total. This means that authors do not regularly turn to women economists for advice. </p>
<p>This low share of women commenters and authors is problematic for two reasons. The first is a lack of diversity. US Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard recently reiterated why <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20170728a.htm">diversity is so valuable</a>: it helps bringing out better ideas. </p>
<p>The second relates to the role that informal collaboration plays in the social network of financial economics as an academic discipline. People exchange information on conferences, during visits at other institutions or in phone calls. This information includes learning about unpublished results, emerging trends, new ideas, promising datasets and more. Nowadays a researcher has to be active even before their research is published. That’s why being part of the conversation matters.</p>
<p>Those who <a href="http://www.central-places.net/rankings?year=2011&amp;rtype=com&amp;ranking=betweenness">aren’t central</a> to such networks – in the case of my research and data, women – are simply less likely to receive relevant information than those who wield <a href="http://www.central-places.net/rankings?year=2011&amp;rtype=com&amp;ranking=eigenvector">great influence</a>: men. They are left out of the conversation. </p>
<p>A standard hypothesis is that women network differently – and less effectively – than men. There is anecdotal evidence that women <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/why-are-women-losing-out-when-it-comes-to-networking/">shy away from networking</a> for various reasons. One is that women are often <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-gap/359815/">less self-assured</a>, thinking their work will speak for their competence and that no advertising is necessary.</p>
<p>My data allowed me to test – and disprove – this hypothesis. Acknowledgements tell us a great deal about networking behaviour, because authors also use this part of an article to list conferences and seminars at universities where they presented their research. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=472&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=472&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=472&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=593&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=593&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191591/original/file-20171024-30605-1ryld0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=593&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael E Rose</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>As this figure shows, my data reveals that articles written by only women display more informal collaboration per author than those written exclusively by men. A group of female authors, on average, present their article more often and speak to more people than a group of male authors or a mixed-gender author group.</p>
<p>So the issue is not that women network less. Instead, they network more. Why, then, are they acknowledged less frequently?</p>
<h2>Women aren’t asked for advice</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=463&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=463&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=463&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=582&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=582&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191381/original/file-20171023-1748-1c2gq5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=582&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael E Rose</span></span>
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<p>My data shows that male authors, on average, are either not asking women for advice or are not acknowledging the advice they get from women. This might be one reason why women are participating less in the tangled networks of world-leading research.</p>
<p>We do not know at this stage why men acknowledge women less often. One plausible explanation is men’s broader attitude towards women in society and at work. Studies on women on the workplace suggest that <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/12/even-women-think-men-are-more-creative">men perceive women</a> as less creative or and that <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/07/to-seem-confident-women-have-to-be-seen-as-warm">women have to work far harder</a> than men to be seen as equally competent. This might be case here as well.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/03/20/women-arent-failing-at-science-science-is-failing-women/">Nature post</a> put it very well: “Women aren’t failing at science, science is failing at women”. In our case, it’s male scientists – financial economists – who are “failing at women”.</p>
<p><em>This article is based on <a href="http://blog.central-places.net/2017/08/15/202/">a piece</a> that originally appeared on the author’s professional blog.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael E. Rose does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The low share of women revealed in this data is problematic for two reasons: a lack of diversity, and what it shows about women's participation in the social network of informal collaboration.Michael E. Rose, PhD Candidate in Economics, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/825612017-09-29T02:35:23Z2017-09-29T02:35:23ZWhy the FCC's proposed internet rules may spell trouble ahead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186052/original/file-20170914-24296-1yz229k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How fast is that video really coming in?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/hand-holds-smartphone-video-player-application-383521630">hvostik/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-proposes-restore-internet-freedom">Federal Communications Commission takes up a formal proposal</a> to reverse the Obama-era <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-open-internet-order">Open Internet Order</a>, a key question consumers and policymakers alike are asking is: What difference do these rules make?</p>
<p>My research team has been studying one key element of the regulations – called “throttling,” the practice of limiting download speeds – for several years, spanning a period both before the 2015 Open Internet Order was issued and after it took effect. Our <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2815675.2815691">findings</a> reveal not only the state of internet openness before the Obama initiative but also the measurable results of the policy’s effect.</p>
<p>The methods we used and the tools we developed investigate how internet service providers manage your traffic and demonstrate how open the internet really is – or isn’t – as a result of evolving internet service plans, as well as political and regulatory changes. Regular people can explore their own services with our <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.meddle.wehe">mobile app for Android</a>, which is out now; an iOS version is coming soon. We’re working with the <a href="https://www.arcep.fr/">French equivalent of the FCC</a> to promote our measurement tools in France to help audit whether French ISPs are compliant with local net neutrality protections. Other countries, including the U.S., could follow the French lead, using our tools to evaluate their internet service quality.</p>
<h2>Rules take effect</h2>
<p>Before the Open Internet Order took effect in 2015, companies running cellular networks were allowed to use throttling to manage how much data their networks needed to handle at any given time. To do this, some companies capped users’ download speeds, which could cause video to stream at lower quality, with less-sharp images that were blurry during action sequences.</p>
<p>But there were limited rules governing how the mobile companies enforced those caps: We found some providers <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2815675.2815691">slowing down YouTube videos but not Netflix or other video services</a>. This is an example of a major concern net neutrality supporters have: that internet providers might give preference to traffic from one site or another – perhaps making video providers <a href="https://www.benton.org/node/197702">pay extra to have their material delivered at high speed</a>. If the speed or quality consumers can get from an online service depends on how much providers can afford to pay, that can put startups and innovators at a disadvantage to existing internet giants.</p>
<p>When it took effect, the Open Internet Order allowed internet providers to use throttling in only a limited way, under the so-called “<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/12/8116237/net-neutrality-rules-open-internet-order-released">reasonable network management</a>” provision. Instead of singling out specific types of data for throttling, mobile companies – and wired internet providers as well – were required to do so in a way that treats all traffic equally. We <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2815675.2815691">observed</a> the companies that had slowed down YouTube but not Netflix shifting their policies to reflect this new requirement.</p>
<h2>The return of throttling</h2>
<p>In late 2015, though, T-Mobile announced a program it called “<a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/binge-on-streaming-video.html">Binge On</a>,” <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/t-mobiles-video-free-for-all-everything-you-need-to-know-about-binge-on-faq/">departing from its competitors</a> by offering its customers “free” video streaming – the ability to watch some video services on their devices without counting against monthly high-speed data limits. The trade-off was that their video quality from those providers would be limited in the best case to the <a href="https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-24291">equivalent of a regular DVD</a> – not the high-definition video most people have come to expect, and which mobile data networks are capable of carrying. Some video sites would come in at higher quality, but their data would count against users’ monthly caps. Other sites’ videos, strangely enough, would come in at low quality, though the data would still count against users’ monthly caps.</p>
<p>When my team heard the announcement, we were perplexed. It seemed clear T-Mobile was throttling, perhaps even <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/binge-on-streaming-video.html">preferentially</a>, choosing a handful of services to exempt from users’ monthly data caps, while continuing to count data from other video providers. And many users were <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/landing/binge-on-letter.html">opted in by default</a>, potentially never knowing that T-Mobile had decided for them whether they could stream high-quality video. But most confounding, how did T-Mobile know what “video” was, as distinct from other data flowing through its networks? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rYodcvhh7b8?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">What are ‘packets,’ and how do they travel around the internet?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Internet traffic is broken up into small chunks of data called “<a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question525.htm">packets</a>” that travel through the wires separately and then are reassembled by the computer or mobile device that’s receiving them. Think of these as small messages in individual envelopes traveling through the mail. In both cases, the packets and envelopes reach their destination according to the address written on the outside – not what is contained inside.</p>
<p>It would be strange if the U.S. Postal Service looked at the envelopes, guessed what was inside, and decided your credit card bill should be delivered first, but delayed your paycheck. Unlike some envelopes, packets coming from YouTube or Spotify don’t carry information on the outside declaring what’s inside – say, “video” or “music streaming” or “web.” To the internet, they all look the same. And under the principles of net neutrality, they should all be treated the same.</p>
<h2>Unequal handling</h2>
<p>Through a <a href="http://dd.meddle.mobi/bingeon.html">set of rigorous experiments</a>, we were able to find out how T-Mobile and other internet companies tried to tell the difference between video packets and packets containing other types of data: They were looking inside the packets – inside the envelopes – for particular <a href="http://dd.meddle.mobi/bingeon.html">words or terms</a>, like “netflix.com” or “googlevideo.” </p>
<p>Someone had come up with a list of hints that indicated a particular piece of network traffic was in fact part of an online video. But of course there are countless video streaming platforms – and old ones die off and new ones are started every day. T-Mobile’s list couldn’t possibly cover them all.</p>
<p>We found that the popular video service <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a> was not throttled by T-Mobile or Verizon. This meant that people who streamed Vimeo content used up some of their monthly data cap, but got better video quality than people watching YouTube or Netflix. This decision by T-Mobile – though it <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/tom-wheeler-accuses-att-and-verizon-of-violating-net-neutrality/">passed</a> a <a href="https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0111/DOC-342982A1.pdf">review by the FCC</a> – affected how well YouTube and Netflix could compete with Vimeo, which raises a specter of more problems to come if the FCC scraps the Open Internet Order (which, for all these reasons, <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filing/10829966722377">I have urged them not to</a>). What, for example, would stop AT&amp;T from giving its DirecTV subsidiary faster and better-quality traffic than it gave competitors Netflix and Hulu? </p>
<h2>Protecting consumers</h2>
<p>One way to ensure users get the service they’re expecting – and paying for – is to require more transparency from internet providers. Specifically, they should disclose how much they slow down video and what that does to video quality, but also what hints or techniques they use to detect video traffic in the first place. </p>
<p>In addition, those methods must ensure that internet companies treat all content providers equally – so users don’t get better or worse performance from different sites based on corporate interests <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-reaches-streaming-traffic-agreement-with-comcast/">or disputes</a>. And regulators need to enforce these basic rules, <a href="http://dd.meddle.mobi/codeanddata.html">using auditing tools</a> like the <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.meddle.wehe">open-source ones</a> my research team has developed.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article originally published Sept. 29, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Choffnes receives funding from the National Science Foundation, Google, Data Transparency Lab, Amazon, and the Department of Homeland Security. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of his sponsors.</span></em></p>How do internet companies decide which network traffic to slow down and which to charge against users' data plans? And what can we learn about net neutrality from the answers?David Choffnes, Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/791512017-08-01T00:17:48Z2017-08-01T00:17:48ZCreating a high-speed internet lane for emergency situations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178515/original/file-20170717-6091-1kdisv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In an emergency, responders&#39; telecommunications could get delayed by overloaded networks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.hampton.gov/691/Recruiting">City of Hampton, Virginia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During large disasters, like hurricanes, wildfires and terrorist attacks, people want emergency responders to arrive quickly and help people deal with the crisis. In order to do their best, police, medics, firefighters and those who manage them need lots of information: Who is located where, needing what help? And what equipment and which rescuers are available to intervene? With all of the technology we have, it might seem that gathering and sharing lots of information would be pretty simple. But communicating through a disaster is much more challenging than it appears.</p>
<p>The event itself can make communications worse, damaging networks and phone systems or cutting electricity to an area. And regular people often add to the problem as they <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/16/cellphone-networks-overwhelmed-blast-aftermath/wq7AX6AvnEemM35XTH152K/story.html">overload mobile networks</a> with calls, texts and other electronic messages checking on loved ones or seeking help.</p>
<p>As researchers about digital networks and emergency communications, we are developing a faster and more reliable way to send and receive large amounts of data through the internet in times of crisis. Working with actual responders and emergency managers, we have created a method for giving urgent information priority over other internet traffic, effectively creating a high-speed lane on the internet for use in emergencies. While a national emergency responder network initiative called <a href="https://www.firstnet.gov/">FirstNet</a> is beginning to get going, it requires <a href="https://www.firstnet.gov/network">building an all-new wireless network</a> just for emergency services to use. By contrast, our system uses existing internet connections, while giving priority to rescue workers’ data.</p>
<h2>Connecting networks</h2>
<p>At the moment, it’s reasonably common for <a href="http://www.govtech.com/em/disaster/NY-Computer-Network-Sandy.html">communication networks to become overloaded</a> when disaster strikes. When lots of people try to make cellphone calls or use mobile data, the <a href="https://boingboing.net/2013/04/17/why-is-it-so-hard-to-make-a-ph.html#more-224850">networks get too busy</a> for calls to connect and messages to go through.</p>
<p>The problem is that standard methods for routing traffic through the internet aren’t always able to handle all those connections at one time. In technical terms, the internet is a <a href="http://www.cidr-report.org/as2.0/">collection of more than 54,000 smaller networks</a>. Some of the networks that make up the internet are quite large, like those belonging to major internet service providers or large corporations, but many of them are fairly small. No matter their size, each of these networks has equipment that lets it route traffic to each of the others. </p>
<p>Computer networks don’t all connect directly to each other. And their digital addresses don’t help much – we humans assume 12 Main Street and 14 Main Street are next door, but computers with similar numeric addresses <a href="https://www.vox.com/a/internet-maps">may not be physical neighbors</a> to each other.</p>
<p>As a result, the router connecting each of these 54,000 networks to the rest of the internet must keep a list of every one of its counterparts, and the most efficient way to reach each of them. This is like needing a list of written directions for every place in the world you might want to go.</p>
<p>This system, governed by the rules set out in the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol">border gateway protocol</a>,” works well most of the time. But when it fails, there can be long delays in communications. In fact, on average, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2006.254830">150 seconds</a> (two and a half minutes) can go by before a failure is identified. In that time, the data just wait in an information traffic jam, not moving. Online, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/297686724/on-a-rigged-wall-street-milliseconds-make-all-the-difference">milliseconds matter</a> – hundreds of seconds are effectively an eternity.</p>
<p>When one router detects a network failure, it has to let all the others know what’s happened, and how to reroute their traffic. This is like having just one traffic cop try to coordinate rush hour around a major bottleneck. The process takes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2006.254830">at least several minutes</a>, and sometimes several hours. Until then, data in transit can be delayed or lost entirely. In an emergency, that could mean the difference between life and death. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=245&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=245&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=245&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=307&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=307&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179054/original/file-20170720-15106-rv08qe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=307&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When a link fails, the network system must find a new connection between two communicating devices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rochester Institute of Technology</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Developing the emergency protocol</h2>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dCWUVcXS9QM?wmode=transparent&amp;start=1110" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A demonstration of the authors’ network routing system.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Working with students from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, we have created a new traffic control system tailored specifically to emergency response networks. It runs without affecting other protocols on the internet. We call it the <a href="http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=61939">multi-node label routing protocol</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than requiring every router to keep track of the best directions to every other one, we divide possible routes for internet traffic into hierarchies. These mirror <a href="https://www.fema.gov/national-incident-management-system">existing emergency response plans</a>: An individual responder sends information to a local commander, who combines several responders’ data and passes the data on to regional managers, who assemble a wider picture they pass on to state or federal response coordinators.</p>
<p>Our routing plan makes direct network connections mirror this real-world emergency response hierarchy. When routers are allowed to connect only with their immediate neighbors in the hierarchy, they can notice when links fail and reroute traffic much more quickly.</p>
<h2>Testing in the real world</h2>
<p>Our system is designed to operate over the same internet as everyone else, and without affecting other traffic. We tested our system on the National Science Foundation’s Global Environment for Network Innovations, a collaborative effort among many universities around the U.S. that allows researchers to develop networking protocols and systems using real computers and networking equipment located across the country. In our case, we connected 27 computers together for our tests, devised by
<a href="http://www.rit.edu/cast/crr/">RIT environmental, health and safety students</a>, many of whom are volunteer emergency responders.</p>
<p>Our test – which we did in front of real emergency commanders and personnel – compared our system to the standard border gateway protocol. When we broke links in the 27-node network, multi-node label routing communications resumed within 12.5 seconds, which is 12 times faster than the regular border gateway protocol’s recovery speed. We can shorten that delay even more by changing settings in our protocol’s configuration.</p>
<p><iframe id="8yjDe" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8yjDe/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Our system can easily be installed across a much wider area than just 27 test machines, specifically because of how it simplifies the paths information takes between routers. This means incident commanders and managers get information more quickly, and are better able to allocate responders and equipment to meet needs as they develop. In this way, our work supports the efforts of those who support us in our hour of need.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79151/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nirmala Shenoy received funding for this work from NSF and US Ignite.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erik Golen receives funding from the National Science Foundation US Ignite program <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1450854">https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1450854</a></span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Schneider receives funding from NSF, NIST, DHS; these are all federal agencies that fund grants for my research.</span></em></p>A new data management system can give emergency responders a fast lane on the internet to help speed rescue efforts after a disaster.Nirmala Shenoy, Professor of Information Sciences and Technologies, Rochester Institute of TechnologyErik Golen, Visiting Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technologies, Rochester Institute of TechnologyJennifer Schneider, Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking; Principal of the Collaboratory for Resiliency & Recovery @ RIT & Professor of Civil Engineering Technology, Environmental Management and Safety, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/818142017-07-31T07:44:24Z2017-07-31T07:44:24ZNew research highlights challenges of building networks for employees and entrepreneurs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180267/original/file-20170730-18978-3hgsjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Building diverse networks with people different from ourselves allows people to access new information and resources. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">fruitnet/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Social networks are essential to the success of both employees and entrepreneurs. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2393655?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Research</a> shows that people with diverse contacts are able to access information that helps them generate better ideas. </p>
<p>In particular, workplace social networks <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/421787">contribute to</a> innovation, career advancement and individual performance at work. These <a href="http://annals.aom.org/content/4/1/317">networks help</a> individuals to access resources, information and support. In doing so, they are <a href="http://annals.aom.org/content/4/1/317">more likely</a> to achieve work related goals. </p>
<p>Previous <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0001839212474272">studies</a> show proximity to others as an important factor in building new relationships. Employees are often encouraged to relocate to regional economic clusters (e.g. Silicon Valley), join incubators and coworking spaces, and find ways to be close to other entrepreneurs, investors and customers.</p>
<p>A new <a href="http://my.aom.org/Program2017/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=14802">study</a> by Sofia Bapna and Russell Funk of the University of Minnesota found that social, as well as spatial barriers, need to be reduced for people to form new connections. </p>
<p>When attempting to build these networks, people face two types of challenges. The first is uncertainty in the search, that is what types of connections a person should build, and where he or she should look to build those connections. The second is social uncertainty of joining new groups. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=ojyvZ5ujIWQC&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PR2&amp;dq=kanter+1993&amp;ots=2aoLPhx45a&amp;sig=4eAhe-ZNEKwpP3OGcqY9BLu8KOo#v=onepage&amp;q=kanter%201993&amp;f=false">These uncertainties</a> are more pronounced amongst women in male-dominated professions.</p>
<p>Building diverse networks with people different from ourselves allows people to access new information and resources. People attempting to diversify their networks often are <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=WY6rAgAAQBAJ&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PP1&amp;dq=piskorski+2014+a+social+strategy&amp;ots=cZiHptyboV&amp;sig=DHBaNCGFyH57YrKmvCt0FVb9fpg#v=onepage&amp;q=piskorski%202014%20a%20social%20strategy&amp;f=false">uncertain</a> about the norms and expectations of new groups. As a result, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2393451?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">research</a> shows that people tend to focus on building connections to others who are like them.</p>
<p>Given the lower representation of women in STEM industries, in their study, Bapna and Funk are interested in ways this imbalance can be improved. </p>
<p>Their study assigned a group of 1161 (27% women) IT conference attendees to one of three groups - a control group, a search uncertainty group and a social uncertainty group. In the control group, attendees had access to an app to search for and message others at the conference. The other two groups received emails from the conference organiser with specific recommendations as to who they should meet.</p>
<p>In the control group, women made fewer contacts, and spent much less time talking to each new contact. The effect of this was the female attendees made 43% fewer contacts, and spent 48% less time talking to new contacts, compared to male attendees.</p>
<p>In the other groups, female attendees increased the number of new contacts by 55%, relative to women in the control group. Time spent talking to new contacts increased by 84% for women in the search uncertainty group compared to the control group.</p>
<p>The results show that individuals who received organised introductions made a far greater number of new contacts, and made far stronger connections with these contacts than those who received no introduction. </p>
<p>These findings emphasise the importance of creating opportunities for both employees and entrepreneurs to connect, beyond just bringing them together in a particular setting or event. A recent <a href="http://my.aom.org/Program2017/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=14802">study</a> I undertook found that the role of a host in business incubators and coworking spaces was critical in helping to identify and create opportunities to form new and diverse networks. </p>
<p>Entrepreneurs rely on social ties in building new ventures, and employees rely on effective workplace networks to generate innovation and increase performance. These new studies highlight the importance of both the spatial setting, as well as clear strategies, to facilitate new connections and networks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
When attempting to network, people face social and spatial barriers.Libby Sander, Lecturer, Bond Business School, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804992017-07-06T19:39:16Z2017-07-06T19:39:16ZFrom communities to territories: towards a Mediterranean coworking network<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176778/original/file-20170704-23217-ish9o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coworking space Make it Marseille.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiolartisan</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article was written with Léonard Lévêque, director of the Pôle Coopération of <a href="http://avitem.org/">AVITEM</a> and Charlotte Yelnik, a consultant for <a href="http://adhocverbis.com/">AdHocVerbis</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In the last few years there has been a growing number of what are known as “coworking” spaces in the world. While they first appeared in the United States, half are now located in Europe. Given the growth of freelancers and teleworking practices, their emergence corresponds to a certain need. Beyond a transformation of the world of work, with fewer salaried employees and localized businesses, they also show another form of management, an alternative production, territory and governance management model – even a new economic and democratic model.</p>
<p>That is the context of the European project <a href="https://ied.eu/what-we-do/projects/coworkmed/">CoWorkMed</a> led by the Agency for Sustainable Mediterranean Cities and Territories (AVITEM). Co-financed by the <a href="https://interreg-med.eu/">Interreg MED</a> programme, the project involves French, Greek, Italian, Croatian and Spanish partners. It aims at providing an inventory of coworking spaces in these five partner countries and at creating tools adapted to cross-border networking between these third places.</p>
<p>A first study carried out in the framework of this project enables us to examine the emergence of these new ways of working and social construction methods. What do these new places tell us about the transformations of our professional, social and political world? What are they witnessing? How can we turn them into springboards for territorial development?</p>
<h2>The community</h2>
<p>The first coworking spaces started out in 2006 in the United States and were directly related to the development of knowledge-based and digital economy – they were created for freelancers who wanted to share a workplace in a community of needs, constraints and values, as well as through the will to create an active network to trigger professional opportunities. The first principle of coworking is therefore a place and a community, a network of shared skills and assets, often animated by social events whose aim is forging links between coworkers on both the social and professional aspect. It is a direct emanation of the concept of the “third place”, between private and public place, home and work, with an informal meeting place that creates opportunities.</p>
<p>Over the following decade, the concept spread to other sectors, resulting in the creation of collaborative production sites, in particular in innovation and research sectors, especially with “fab labs” (for <em>fabrication laboratories</em>). Then the social, cultural and public-service sectors seized them, producing shared spaces adapted to their needs, with a desire to involve stakeholders and users to develop services through a co-construction logic. Fifteen years later, there is a strong and direct impact on the territories.</p>
<h2>The territory</h2>
<p>Following the logic of pollination, acceleration, incubation and other processes of transformation of ideas involving a community, these places have become true hubs of local innovation. Bringing together a range of actors in a spontaneous way, they’re epicenters of creativity at the scale of a territory, a city or a city center. Thus they activate local economic dynamics and combine them with the unique features of a territory, creating a genuine regenerative ecosystem.</p>
<p>In addition to the direct effects of economic growth, coworking spaces also have indirect impacts on land management. For example, users of these places place an emphasis on proximity between living places and work, they influence mobility and transport. They thus act against urban congestion, reducing commuting and decreasing the environmental and economic costs linked to transport.</p>
<p>These meeting and interaction points between professionals and users also contribute to restoring the wealth of a territory in its geographical coherence. By creating a concrete and driving network between the inhabitants, citizens, users, workers, who are concerned by the same issues, especially local ones, they value the territory as an integral capital, converging its strengths towards common objectives.</p>
<h2>The governance</h2>
<p>These third places were designed as spaces for sharing knowledge and building collective dynamics. They are built on values of sustainable development, including in terms of management and governance. Through the development of teleworking, big companies improved their employees’ working and living conditions, giving them more autonomy and making them more creative and productive. Entrepreneurs can boost their territories through related projects. Communities are inspired by this trend, seeking to revitalize declining territories through the impulse of third places in the social and public-service sectors.</p>
<p>Groups and stakeholders that were formerly less open are now creating links. Indeed, from the first “coworking spaces” where professionals from various sectors formed “opportunistic” partnerships (optimising the opportunities offered by the circumstances) to the new forms of innovative, social and cultural third places, real public-private-citizens partnerships are being formed. Through more or less informal places that help people meet each other, civil society and popular democracy reinvent themselves.</p>
<p>After 18 months of implementation, the CoWorkMed project will provide a global vision of these networks in the partner territories (France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Croatia) to promote their institutional recognition and their transnational structuring as a lever of innovation in the Mediterranean. Through the study of new models, it will provide the basis for the creation of a Mediterranean coworking network.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raphaël Besson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What do these new places tell us about the transformations of our professional, social and political world? And how to turn them into springboards for territorial development?Raphaël Besson, Directeur de l'agence Villes Innovations, Chercheur associé au laboratoire PACTE (Université de Grenoble), Université Grenoble AlpesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/782072017-05-24T15:05:18Z2017-05-24T15:05:18ZWhy resilience matters for schools trying to thrive in tough situations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170749/original/file-20170524-25614-1rp3vb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Schools can offer their pupils valuable support systems even if they&#39;re short on resources.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Many schools in Southern Africa are functioning in tough situations. Poverty, a lack of resources and poor or non-existent basic services all combine to make a less than ideal environment for education. But a number of schools in Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa display incredible resilience – a concept steeped in indigenous knowledge systems.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation Africa’s education editor Natasha Joseph asked Professor Liesel Ebersöhn to explain the role of resilience in education.</em></p>
<p><strong>What is “resilience”, in an educational setting?</strong></p>
<p>Resilience in schools involves a process where teachers, principals, families, students and district officials know and use strategies that help teachers to teach and students to learn.</p>
<p>Resilience becomes relevant in education as soon as there is a shock to the education system that requires intervention. After that shock, resilience can ensure better than projected outcomes for students and teachers.</p>
<p>In a postcolonial, transforming society – like <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-south-africa-the-most-unequal-society-in-the-world-48334">highly unequal</a> South Africa – such “shocks” or challenges are chronic. They don’t let up. They are also cumulative, coming from a variety of fronts. </p>
<p>In South Africa these barriers include a limited number of trained teachers; an unreliable supply of teaching materials; and multilingualism – either teachers and pupils don’t share home languages, or they do but converse only in English for the purpose of teaching and learning.</p>
<p>School systems, in conjunction with health and welfare systems, may not be responsive enough to identify pupils who are vulnerable because of health or socio-economic needs. Even if they can, the services available might be really limited. A lack of physical infrastructure like buildings, electricity, water and sanitation in schools limits opportunities for teachers to teach, and for students to learn and develop. </p>
<p>Schools that have supportive strategies in place can offer buffers. They can promote positive outcomes – for pupils and teachers. </p>
<p><strong>Can you tell us about a school in southern Africa whose resilience is allowing it to flourish? How does that resilience manifest itself?</strong></p>
<p>I’ve conducted research in rural Swaziland and Lesotho, urban Namibia and four of South Africa’s nine provinces around school-community resilience.</p>
<p>At many of the schools I visited that are functioning in challenging contexts, teachers draw on their cultural heritage – their indigenous knowledge systems – to provide care and support. This promotes resilience.</p>
<p>Teachers in these schools don’t go into “fight or flight” mode in response to the sorts of shocks I’ve described. They flock together. They tap into each other’s relationships to access and use available resources. For instance, I met a primary school teacher in an Eastern Cape informal settlement who asked a relative to connect her to a friend working as a nurse at the neighbourhood clinic. Now when the teacher sees that a child is sick she doesn’t feel helpless or frustrated: she calls the nurse directly and refers that child and family for health care. </p>
<p>In cases where teachers suspect a family may require financial support they can refer them to their “insider” link; someone who can help with identifying and completing the necessary forms. It can be hard for families with high rates of illiteracy to access the help they need, so these connections are vital.</p>
<p>So the flocking starts with an identified problem. Then teachers think about which resources they need to address this need, and who could connect them with a person who’s a custodian of this resource or service. In this way a network is created. Its purpose is to pragmatically access resources. </p>
<p>What they’re doing fits into a theory in indigenous knowledge systems that’s called <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-6368-5_6#page-1">Relationship Resourced Resilience</a>. This explains how individuals connect in times of hardship to share limited resources. They do so by providing social support to one another with positive outcomes for the collective, not only the individual.</p>
<p>This resilience response is robust. It continues to be used in urban and rural settings, by elders and young people, as well as men and women.</p>
<p><strong>What is it that these schools are doing differently?</strong></p>
<p>Schools that are able to show resilience are those that tap into age-old practices. These have stood the test of time and the absence of formal, policy-level structures to provide social support.</p>
<p>This social support is relational, collective and pragmatic. Teachers use existing relationships to tap into resources. For example, they might use reciprocal donations. These are in the form of skills in exchange for money, or for goods like food, or shared savings in societies to provide funds for school uniforms, or festivities, or transport. The cultural use of relationships is aimed at collective buffering against shocks and ultimately collective well-being.</p>
<p><strong>Are there obvious and visible differences in these schools’ results?</strong></p>
<p>The positive outcomes that have <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13540602.2014.937960">been measured</a> relate to resilient school communities’ subjective health and well-being documented over a ten-year time frame with teachers and students in primary and secondary schools, and in urban and rural schools.</p>
<p>At these schools, teachers continue to show up, teach and support each and their students. Parents and caregivers bring their children to schools that follow this resilience formula: research <a href="http://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/44067?show=full">shows</a> that such schools have higher enrolment numbers, which means they get more government funding for teacher posts and so enjoy lower student-teacher ratios.</p>
<p>Parents, caregivers and school-community volunteers offer their services to such schools. They assist with cultivating gardens to supplement the school nutrition programme. They follow up on students who don’t attend school and encourage them to return, and participate in after-school programmes that provide well-being and development opportunities for young people to engage in arts, culture, sports, and homework. </p>
<p>Neighbourhood businesses link with such schools to provide computers for teacher professional development and student training. They provide funds for counselling centres, books for libraries and jungle gyms for crucial development through play.</p>
<p><strong>What lessons can be taken from your research?</strong></p>
<p>Social support is an indigenous knowledge system in southern Africa. It has been used over time to combat challenges and compensate for the absence of equal services. It has also been used to access available opportunities, and connect people to adaptive pathways. It is a strategy that promotes positive outcomes for many even amid ongoing scarcity. It has been refined and has proven to be robust as a response to shocks. Social support is used organically in some schools – even in the absence of formal intervention. </p>
<p>In other schools that are struggling to adapt to ever-present hardships, systematic interventions grafted onto existing indigenous knowledge about social support <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Liesel_Ebersoehn2/publications?sorting=recentlyAdded&amp;editMode=1">could promote resilience.</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liesel Ebersöhn receives funding from Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund (NMCF), the South African National Research Foundation, Synergos, and the Kim Samuel Foundation . </span></em></p>Schools that have supportive strategies in place can offer buffers. They can promote positive outcomes -- for pupils and teachers.Liesel Ebersöhn, Director: Centre for the Study of Resilience, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/762582017-04-19T22:34:40Z2017-04-19T22:34:40ZCalculating where America should invest in its transportation and communications networks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165883/original/file-20170419-2410-x9z679.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Which links are most important in road and information networks?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/network-connection-technology-concept-city-background-436942042">Sahacha Nilkumhang/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The American economy is underpinned by networks. Road networks carry traffic and freight; the internet and telecommunications networks carry our voices and digital information; the electricity grid is a network carrying energy; financial networks transfer money from bank accounts to merchants. They’re vast, often global systems – but a local disruption can really block them up.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/gdot-state-offering-31m-in-incentives-to-reopen-i-85-before-june/511832846">the I-85 bridge collapse in Atlanta will affect that city’s traffic for months</a>. A seemingly minor train derailment at New York City’s Penn Station resulted in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/nyregion/messy-commute-for-nj-transit-and-lirr-riders-a-day-after-derailment.html?_r=0">multiple days of travel chaos</a> in April. </p>
<p>As the Trump administration plans to <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/328586-an-infrastructure-plan-coming-but-when">invest hundreds of billions in American infrastructure networks</a>, it will be crucial to identify what elements are the most crucial to repair or improve. This is not only important for maximizing benefits; it’s also useful in preventing disaster. Is there, perhaps, a telecommunication line that would be particularly damaging if it were destroyed? Or one road through an area that has an especially large role in keeping traffic flowing smoothly?</p>
<p><a href="http://greatvalley.psu.edu/person/qiang-patrick-qiang">Patrick Qiang</a> and I are operations management scholars who have developed <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10898-007-9198-1">a way to evaluate network performance</a> and simulate the effects of potential changes, whether planned (like a highway repair) or unexpected (like a natural disaster). By modeling the independent behavior of all the users of a network, we can calculate the flow – of <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10898-015-0371-7">freight</a>, <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/79/38005">commuters</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77958-2_14">money</a> or anything else – across each link, and how other links’ flows will change. This lets us identify where investment will be most beneficial, and which projects shouldn’t happen at all.</p>
<h2>More isn’t always better</h2>
<p>It’s very difficult to measure networks’ performance, in part because they are so complex, but also because people use them differently at different times, and because those choices affect others’ experiences. For example, one person choosing to drive to work instead of taking the bus puts one more car on the road, which might get involved in a crash or otherwise contribute to a traffic jam.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Explaining the Braess paradox.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1968, German mathematician Dietrich Braess observed the possibility that adding a road to an area with congested traffic <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.1050.0127">could actually make things worse</a>, not better. <a href="https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/braess/braess-new.html">This paradox</a> can occur when travel times depend on the amount of traffic. If too many drivers decide their own optimal route involves one particular road, that road can become congested, slowing everyone’s travel time. In effect, the drivers would have been better off if the road hadn’t been built.</p>
<p>This phenomenon has been found not only <a href="https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/braess/braess-new.html#BraessArticle">in transportation networks</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1239/jap/1032374242">the internet</a>, but also, recently, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/115/28004">in electrical circuits</a>. </p>
<p>We shouldn’t waste time and money building or repairing network links the community would be better without. But how can we tell which elements help and which make things worse?</p>
<h2>Calculating efficiency</h2>
<p>The best networks can handle the highest demand at the lowest average cost for each trip – such as a commute from a worker’s home to her office. Evaluating a network means identifying which locations need to be connected to each other, as well as the volume of traffic between specific places and the various costs involved – such as gas, pavement wear and tear, and police services keeping drivers safe.</p>
<p>Once a network is measured in this way, it can be converted into a computerized model where we can simulate removing links or adding new ones in particular places. Then we can measure what happens to the rest of the network: Does traffic get more congested, and if so, by how much? Or, as in the Braess paradox, do travel times actually get shorter when a link is removed? And how much money does a particular project cost to build, and save in time or user expenses?</p>
<h2>Going global</h2>
<p>Our method of measuring a network’s performance has been used to refine
<a href="https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en79/rd/route-optimization-how-efficient-will-the-proposed-north-dublin-metro-be">the route of a proposed metro line in Dublin, Ireland</a>; <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313365965_Maritime_Network_Efficiency_Comparison_in_Indonesia_Nusantara_Pendulum_and_Sea_Tollway">to design new shipping routes in Indonesia</a>; <a href="http://www.cedim.de/download/14_Schulz.pdf">to identify which roads in Germany should be first on the maintenance list</a>; and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-0896-3">to determine the effects of road closures after major fires in regions of Greece</a>.</p>
<p>Our method has also been applied to make supply chains more efficient, both to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-634-2_6">maximize profits</a> and to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856412000249">speed disaster relief supplies</a> to people in need.</p>
<p>As the U.S. works to enhance its economic competitiveness, the country will need to invest in many different types of networks, to maximize their usefulness and value to Americans. Using measurement methods like ours can guide leaders to wise investments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Nagurney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When planning major infrastructure investments, it's important to know which road, freight and information networks are most important – and which proposals might make things worse, not better.Anna Nagurney, John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Operations Management, University of Massachusetts AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/750082017-03-28T15:07:41Z2017-03-28T15:07:41ZHow to make an Internet of Intelligent Things work for Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162048/original/image-20170322-31219-1uhp22a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Internet of Things offers great opportunities for Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Late in 2016 Senegal’s Banque Regionale De Marches announced the launch of the <a href="https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/senegal-will-introduce-blockchain-based-national-digital-currency/">eCFA Franc</a>; a cryptocurrency for the countries of the <a href="http://www.uemoa.int/en">West African Monetary Union</a> – Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Togo and Guinea-Bissau. This and similar innovations mark the coming of age of a new generation of applications – an Internet of Intelligent Things – that could provide a new infrastructure for economic development across Africa.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/05/13/simple-explanation-internet-things-that-anyone-can-understand/#648a7cae1d09">Internet of Things</a> is a network of physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items. They are equipped with electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity so they can collect and exchange data. There’s wide enthusiasm about spectacular innovations such as <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/4/10707894/samsung-smart-refrigerator-connected-fridge-iot-ces-2016">Intelligent refrigerators</a>and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/15/driverless-cars-12-things-you-need-to-know">driverless cars</a>. But a quieter revolution is underway in everyday systems and facilities, such as <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/financial-services/articles/the-derivative-effect-how-financial-services-can-make-iot-technology-pay-off.html">financial services</a>.</p>
<p>There are particular possibilities here for Africa. <a href="https://theconversation.com/development-in-africa-is-on-a-firm-footing-heres-how-to-take-it-to-the-next-level-70665">The potential for the continent’s economic growth is well established</a>. There’s also an abundance of opportunity for digital innovation. This was clear from a recent continent wide <a href="http://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/mtnecbyjumia/">entrepreneurship competition</a> organised by the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. </p>
<p>More broadly, the new Internet of Things has the potential to compensate for Africa’s legacies of underdevelopment. The key here is the development of the blockchain from a fringe concept into a mainstream digital innovation.</p>
<h2>The blockchain and Africa</h2>
<p>The blockchain, mostly known as the technology that underpins digital currency <a href="https://www.bitcoin.com/">Bitcoin</a>, is an almost incorruptible digital ledger of transactions, agreements and contracts that is distributed across thousands of computers, worldwide. </p>
<p>It has <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35370304">the potential</a> to be both foundation and springboard for a new developmental infrastructure.</p>
<p>New blockchain platforms such as <a href="https://www.ethereum.org">Ethereum</a> are supporting the development of distributed applications. These “DApps” can provide accessible ways to use the blockchain. They act like “autonomous agents” – little brains that receive and process information, make decisions and take actions. These new capabilities will have widespread implications when linked to cryptocurrencies through “smart contacts” that are also securely recorded in the blockchain. </p>
<p>DApps provide a practical and affordable means of making Things intelligent and able to interact directly with other Things. They can be programmed to take data-informed actions without human intervention. </p>
<p>These innovations will have particular benefits across Africa. Economic growth is underpinned and enabled by appropriate financial services. Early internet-based innovations such as Kenya’s <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-18">M-PESA</a> have clearly demonstrated the appetite for accessible, Internet-financial services. But many small and medium businesses are still restricted. Their owners usually can’t access standard loan financing. Banks will not extend credit facilities without traditional title deeds to land and buildings, or a conventional payslip. </p>
<p>Don and Alex Tapscott have shown in their <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blockchain-Revolution-Technology-Changing-Business-ebook/dp/B01EGYYNF8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1489994046&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=blockchain+revolution+tapscott">recent book</a> that the new blockchain can be “the ledger of everything”. A house can become an intelligent entity registered on a secure, distributed database once it’s tagged with a geospatial reference and sensors that monitor its continuing existence. </p>
<p>The owner of the asset can, through an Ethereum-based smart contract, secure a loan to expand a start-up enterprise. Intermediary arrangements become unnecessary. Economist Hernando de Soto has suggested this could create “<a href="https://twitter.com/ReadingSignals">a revolution in property rights</a>”.</p>
<h2>Water and energy</h2>
<p>Property and financing aren’t the only areas where the new Internet of Intelligent Things has the potential to compensate for Africa’s legacies of underdevelopment.</p>
<p>Economic growth also depends on affordable and reliable services like water and energy. <a href="http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/africa.shtml">Water</a> is an increasingly scarce resource in many parts of Africa. This is particularly true in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jun/07/africa-urbanisation-megatrend-needs-to-deliver-growth-says-report">cities</a>. Rapid population increases are making old precepts of urban planning redundant.</p>
<p>Technology can help. Autonomous agents positioned across all aspects of water reticulation systems can monitor supplies of potable, storm and waste water. These “little brains” can take appropriate actions to detect and report damage and leakage and close off supply lines. Smart devices can also monitor water quality to detect health hazards. They can regulate and charge for water consumption.</p>
<p>Similarly, for the supply of energy, smart devices are already being deployed across conventional and ageing power grids in other parts of the world. In <a href="https://powerledger.io/">Australia</a>, for instance, intelligent monitors detect when an individual pole is in trouble. They then report the fault and call out a repair crew. They can also communicate with other poles to redirect the supply and preserve the grid’s integrity. </p>
<p>In parallel with conventional supply systems, new digital technologies can enable full integration with renewable sources of energy and the intelligent management of supply at the household level. The new blockchain is designed for secure peer-to-peer transactions combined with incorruptible contracts between multiple parties. Individual households can manage their own supply and demand to incorporate self-generated energy. A house equipped with a simple windmill and a roof made up of photovoltaic tiles could sell surplus power to a neighbour in need. They could also buy from another house to meet a shortfall.<br>
Such microgrids are <a href="http://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pressrelease/2016/energymanagement/pr2016110080emen.htm&amp;content%5B%5D=EM">already in development</a>. The combination of ubiquitous and affordable bandwidth and low cost autonomous agents could bring affordable energy to communities that have never enjoyed reliable electricity supply.</p>
<p>A new infrastructure built up in this way could be a springboard for economic development – from small enterprises that would have the resources to take innovations to scale, to significant household efficiencies and increases in consumer purchasing power. As has been the pattern with previous digital technologies, costs of production will fall dramatically as the global market for intelligent things explodes. That which seems extraordinary today will be everyday tomorrow.</p>
<p>So what’s standing in the way? </p>
<h2>Established interests</h2>
<p>It’s not the technology that’s holding Africa back from embracing the Internet of Things. Rather, it’s the established interests in play. These include state enterprises and near-monopolies that are heavily invested in conventional systems, local patronage networks and conventional banks, and the failure of political vision.</p>
<p>What’s needed is effective public policy and business to ensure that the potential of this next wave of digital innovation is realised. Government and civil society innovators need to be directing much of their attention here.</p>
<p>This is why the West African Monetary Union’s cryptocurrency initiative is encouraging. It’s a step towards the future that Don and Alex Tapscott <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blockchain-Revolution-Technology-Changing-Business-ebook/dp/B01EGYYNF8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1489994046&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=blockchain+revolution+tapscott">envision</a>; a move towards an Internet that’s driven by the falling costs of bargaining, policing, and enforcing social and commercial agreements. </p>
<p>In this new space integrity, security, collaboration, the privacy of all transactions will be the name of the game. So too will the creation and distribution of value. And that’s great news for Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75008/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The new Internet of Things has the potential to compensate for Africa's legacies of underdevelopment.Martin Hall, Emeritus Professor, MTN Solution Space Graduate School of Business, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/709272017-02-02T02:57:56Z2017-02-02T02:57:56ZHunting hackers: An ethical hacker explains how to track down the bad guys<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154807/original/image-20170130-7689-1bxpv08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Looking deep into computer activities.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-person-magnifier-standing-on-laptop-99185414">Via shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a cyberattack occurs, ethical hackers are called in to be digital detectives. In a certain sense, they are like regular police detectives on TV. They have to search computer systems to find ways an intruder might have come in – a digital door or window left unlocked, perhaps. They look for evidence an attacker left of entry, like an electronic footprint in the dirt. And they try to determine what might have been copied or taken.</p>
<p>Understanding this process has become more important to the public in light of recent events in the news. In October 2016, the U.S. officially said Russia was trying to embarrass respected political figures and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/07/politics/us-blames-russia-for-targeting-election-systems/">interfere with the U.S. presidential election process</a>. Specifically, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/white-house-vladimir-putin-election-hacking-donald-trump-233299">the Obama administration formally blamed Russia</a> for hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems. The statement hinged on the investigative capabilities of American ethical hackers working for both private companies and government agencies.</p>
<p>But how do people track down hackers, figuring out what they have done and who they are? What’s involved, and who does this sort of work? The answer is that ethical hackers like me dig deep into digital systems, examining files logging users’ activity and deconstructing malicious software. We often team up with intelligence, legal and business experts, who bring outside expertise to add context for what we can find in the electronic record.</p>
<h2>Detecting an intrusion</h2>
<p>Typically, an investigation begins when someone, or something, detects an unauthorized intrusion. Most network administrators set up <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/introduction-to-intrusion-detection-systems-ids-2486799">intrusion detection systems</a> to help them keep an eye on things. Much like an alarm system on a house, the intrusion detection software watches specific areas of a network, such as where it connects to other networks or where sensitive data are stored. </p>
<p>When it spots unusual activity, like an unauthorized user or a surprisingly high amount of data traffic to a particular off-site server, the intrusion detection system alerts network administrators. They act as <a href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/2935584/data-breach/cybersecurity-first-responders.html">cybersecurity first responders</a> – like digital firefighters, police officers and paramedics. They react to the alert and try to figure out what happened to trigger it.</p>
<p>This can include a <a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-webattack/wa-webattack-pdf.pdf">wide range of attacks</a>, from random, unstructured incursions by individuals and small groups to well-organized and precision-targeted strikes from hackers backed by government agencies. Any of them can set off an intrusion alarm in a variety of ways.</p>
<h2>The immediate response</h2>
<p>Many times, the initial investigation centers on collecting, organizing and analyzing large amounts of network data. <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/msande91si/www-spr04/readings/week1/InternetWhitepaper.htm">Computer networking equipment and servers keep records</a> of who connects, where the connection comes from and what the user does on the system.</p>
<p>Depending on what that analysis shows, the administrator may be able to fix the problem right away, such as by preventing a particular user from logging in, or <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/it-ops/access-control-list-concepts">blocking all network traffic coming from a particular place</a>. But a more complex issue could require calling a sophisticated <a href="https://www.cert.org/incident-management/csirt-development/csirt-faq.cfm">incident response team</a>.</p>
<p>Ideally, each company or organization should have its own internal team or rapid access to a team from outside. Most countries, including the U.S., have their own <a href="https://www.us-cert.gov/">national response teams</a>, often government employees supplemented by private contractors with particular expertise. These teams are groups of ethical hackers who are trained to investigate deeper or more challenging intrusions. In addition to any self-taught skills, these people often have additional experience from the military and higher education. Their most vital expertise is in what is called “<a href="https://weatherhead.case.edu/news/2015/02/23/how-hackers-think">just-in-time learning</a>,” or figuring out how to apply their skills to new situations on the fly.</p>
<p>They conduct larger-scale digital forensic inquiries and analyze malicious software that may have been introduced during the attack. Typically, these teams work to stop the attack and prevent future attacks of that type. The teams can, at times, hunt down the attackers.</p>
<h2>Attributing an attack</h2>
<p>Determining the identity or location of a cyberattacker is incredibly difficult because <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/12/hacker-lexicon-attribution-problem/">there’s no physical evidence to collect or observe</a>. Sophisticated hackers can cover their digital tracks. Although there are many different <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235170094_Techniques_for_Cyber_Attack_Attribution">attribution techniques</a>, the best approach takes advantage of more than one. These techniques often include looking very closely at any files or data left behind by the attackers, or stolen and released as part of the incursion. </p>
<p>Response teams can analyze the grammar used in comments that are commonly embedded in software code, as programmers leave notes to each other or for future developers. They can <a href="http://www.lawpro.ca/LawPRO/metadata.pdf">inspect files’ metadata</a> to see whether text has been translated from one language to another. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-weird-logic-behind-russias-alleged-hacking-17963">in the DNC hack</a>, American cyber experts could look at the specific files published on Wikileaks. Those files’ metadata indicated that some of them contained text converted from the Cyrillic characters of the Russian alphabet to the Latin characters of English.</p>
<p>Investigators can even <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/guccifer-leak-of-dnc-trump-research-has-a-russians-fingerprints-on-it/">identify specific sociocultural references</a> that can provide clues to who conducted the attack. The person or group who claimed responsibility for the DNC hack – <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36913000">using the name Guccifer 2.0</a> – <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/dnc-hacker-guccifer-20-interview">claimed to be Romanian</a>. But he had a hard time speaking Romanian fluently, <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/dnc-hacker-guccifer-20-interview">suggesting he wasn’t actually a native</a>. In addition, Guccifer 2.0 used a different smiley-face symbol than Americans. Instead of typing “:)” <a href="https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc/">Guccifer 2.0 just typed “)”</a> – leaving out the colon, implying that he was Eastern European.</p>
<p>Experienced cyber-investigators build an edge by tracking many significant threats over time. Just like with “cold cases” in regular police work, comparing the latest attack to previous ones can sometimes reveal links, adding pieces to the puzzle. </p>
<p>This is particularly true when dealing with what are called “<a href="https://www.secureworks.com/blog/advanced-persistent-threats-apt-a">advanced persistent threats</a>.” These are attacks that progress gradually, with very sophisticated tactics unfolding over long periods of time. Often attackers custom-design these intrusions to <a href="https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/30/whodunnit-aramco-hack/">exploit specific weaknesses in their targets’ computer systems</a>. That customization can reveal clues, such as programming style – or even choice of programming language – that combine with other information to suggest who might be responsible.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ACCESSION_NUM:case1427809862">cyber-defense community has another advantage</a>: While attackers typically work alone or in small groups and in secret, ethical hackers work together across the world. When a clue emerges in one investigation, it’s <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2326634">common for hackers to share that information</a> – either publicly on a blog or in a scholarly paper, or just directly with other known and trusted investigators. In this way, we build a body of evidence and layers of experience in drawing conclusions.</p>
<p>Very often, a report from an attack investigation will yield clues or suggestions, perhaps that an attacker was Russian or was <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/12/sony-hack-what-we-know/">using a keyboard with Korean characters</a>. Only when the conclusions are <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/who-is-anna-senpai-the-mirai-worm-author/">clear and irrefutable will investigators directly accuse specific attackers</a>. When they do, though, they often share all the information they have. That bolsters the credibility of their conclusions, helps others identify weaknesses or failures of logic – and it shares all that knowledge with the rest of the community, making the next investigation that much easier.</p>
<p>The most skilled hackers can write self-erasing code, fake their web addresses, route their attacks through the devices of innocent victims and make it appear that they are in multiple countries at once. This makes arresting them very hard. In some attacks, we are able to identify the perpetrator, as happened to celebrity-email hacker <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/world/europe/for-guccifer-hacking-was-easy-prison-is-hard-.html">Guccifer 1.0</a>, who was <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-guccifer-idUSKCN1175FB">arrested and imprisoned</a>. </p>
<p>But when the attack is more advanced, coordinated across multiple media platforms and leveraging skillful social engineering over years, it’s likely a government-sponsored effort, making arrests unlikely. That’s what happened when Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election. Of course, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/29/politics/russia-sanctions-announced-by-white-house/">diplomatic sanctions are an option</a>. But pointing fingers between world superpowers is always a dangerous game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Summers is the CEO of Summers &amp; Company, a cyber strategy consulting firm. That company does not conduct intrusion response work, but does advise clients about minimizing risk of future cyberattacks. He also has provided input to other companies in support of their development of cybersecurity training programs.</span></em></p>Cyberdetectives look for digital doors or windows left unlocked, find electronic footprints in the dirt and examine malicious software for clues about who broke in, what they took and why.Timothy Summers, Director of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Engagement, University of MarylandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/646642016-09-23T04:55:03Z2016-09-23T04:55:03ZThe internet helps us translate 'social capital' to economic benefits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137323/original/image-20160912-3796-11b2vym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Networking online might not be so good for your &quot;social capital&quot; overall.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kyle Steed/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Keeping up with our social networks online helps us get what we want in the short term, but could be worse for our accumulation of “social capital” in the longer term, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592615300515">our research shows</a>. One explanation for this is that the benefits from increased online social connectivity are outweighed by the loss of face-to-face social interactions. </p>
<p>The idea of “social capital”, is where the use of social networks helps people achieve goals that would otherwise not be possible or would come at a higher cost. For example if you befriended someone and then they helped you move house. Online social capital is similar except it’s via the internet. For example using your LinkedIn account to connect with potential employers while you’re looking for a job. </p>
<p>Social capital is difficult to measure and so far there is no consensus on how this should be done. Since trust is recognised as the most important factor in social capital, our study uses the Australian data on trust gathered from <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org">the World Values Survey</a> in multiple waves from 1981 to 2014. </p>
<p>This is measured as the percentage of people who answer “most people can be trusted” to the survey question “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” </p>
<p>We found using the internet had a negative effect on trust and therefore on social capital in the long term. However online social capital contributes significantly to the economy.</p>
<h2>How social capital contributes to the economy</h2>
<p>A lot of research to date has found a positive relationship between social capital and real GDP.</p>
<p>Trust, a measure of social capital, can be an important factor in reducing transaction costs (especially market transaction costs) and as a result, <a href="https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=10290">increasing economic welfare and productivity</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2951271?origin=JSTOR-pdf&amp;seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Researchers Stephen Knack and Philip Keefer</a> investigated the association between social capital and economic performance for a sample of 29 economies. They argued that countries with higher trust also have better and more efficient financial institutions, such as more dynamic share market, and a more stable banking sector. Higher levels of trust are also likely to enhance confidence levels in the market which in turn boosts investment, vital for economic growth. </p>
<p>Our research didn’t find any correlation between the trust and this same kind of economic growth in Australia in both the short and long term. However, when taking into account the trust gained through internet use - online social capital, the effects on economic growth were significant.</p>
<p>Research shows internet transactions <a href="https://rsmg.group.uq.edu.au/files/1981/WP70.pdf">create economic benefits</a> because of convenience, compared to the alternatives. The more people who use social networking online, the more people trusted those they connected with over the internet. This enhanced trust contributed to an increase in the number of internet-based transactions, as well as a reduction in transaction costs, helping to boost economic growth. </p>
<p>Social networking online also helped people to learn about buying and selling online which then may potentially contribute towards a significant rise in online retailing and shopping. </p>
<p>There are some major challenges involved in accounting for the economic and personal consequences of changes in social capital. While social capital increases as a result of using the internet, some disadvantaged individuals and groups (for example, some elderly and disabled members of the community or refugee migrants <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/ITP-04-2014-0083">are marginalised by this</a>). This is potentially due to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/digital-divide-4156">“digital divide”</a>: the difference between those who can use the internet and those who can’t. </p>
<p>Disadvantaged people living in rural and remote Australia are at particular risk of being excluded from the benefits of using the internet because of a few factors such as a relatively slower internet speed. </p>
<p>However, apart from various other measures to reduce digital divide, internet use itself can be a potential means to narrow this divide through its positive social capital effect.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Khorshed Alam receives funding from local government agencies. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clement Tisdell, Lorelle Burton, and Mohammad Salahuddin do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spending lots of time on the internet might be good for getting what you want in the short term but it might not work in the long term.Mohammad Salahuddin, Research Assistant, School of Commerce, University of Southern QueenslandClement Tisdell, Emeritus Professor, School of Economics, The University of QueenslandKhorshed Alam, Associate Professor (Economics), University of Southern QueenslandLorelle Burton, Professor, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/655022016-09-20T11:25:10Z2016-09-20T11:25:10ZDoes the UK need or even want a 'Great British Firewall'?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138099/original/image-20160916-17008-19mncnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is a Great British Firewall what UK plc perhaps needs? Or is it asking for trouble?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrea Danti/shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You’ve probably heard of the Great Firewall of China, the virtual fortification that allows the Chinese government to monitor and restrict internet traffic to and from the world’s most populous nation. Well, the cyber-security chief of the UK Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) has <a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/27236/national-cyber-security-centre-to-fight-hackers-with-dns-filtering">suggested early plans</a> for what sounds rather like a “Great British Firewall”. Privacy groups immediately sounded the alarm that it might pose a risk to freedom of speech, and offer the potential for Britain’s secret services to get up to no good. So what exactly is GCHQ proposing and should we be worried?</p>
<p>Firewalls are standard tools for computer defence. They are essentially filters which can control what traffic enters and leaves a network. You are probably protected by a firewall right now, at your workplace or at home, that runs either on your computer’s operating system or on the hardware that provides your connection to the internet. </p>
<p>A firewall can be configured to reject certain types of traffic deemed undesirable or potentially harmful. This might be a connection request from an untrustworthy source, such as a web address known to harbour hackers or spammers, for example. Or it could block a file that looks like it might contain a computer virus or other malware. While deflecting this sort of undesirable traffic the firewall allows standard traffic such as web browsing and email to pass through.</p>
<p>Who decides what gets in and what doesn’t? This is normally the job of whoever manages the network, be that an IT professional working at a company, or you (or your ISP) at home. The policy this manager applies determines what is accepted and what is rejected, so anyone relying on the firewall to be effective needs to trust that this policy is acting in their best interest.</p>
<p>What GCHQ seems to be proposing is a large-scale, nationwide firewall behind which any UK organisation could sit. The intention appears to be that organisations that are central to Britain’s national security would be required to operate behind this firewall, while other organisations big and small could opt-in.</p>
<p>There are too few details at the moment, but this seems like a classic case of who watches the watchman?. If GCHQ is to be the guard that chooses what is deemed “good” or “bad”, then the debate about the merits of a Great British Firewall is really a debate about whether there is trust in GCHQ.</p>
<h2>Wearing two hats</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=752&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=752&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=752&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=945&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=945&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138101/original/image-20160916-17018-24rtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=945&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who’s listening?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Clarke/shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>GCHQ has two roles that don’t always sit particularly comfortably together. Most fundamentally it leads Britain’s <a href="https://www.gchq.gov.uk/features/story-signals-intelligence-1914-2014">signals intelligence</a>, which means essentially that GCHQ eavesdrops on communications for the UK government and the armed forces. Few would argue with the value of spying on enemies during wartime. What has proved much more controversial is GCHQ’s capabilities and activities revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-years-on-from-snowden-uk-gets-green-light-to-continue-accessing-bulk-data-43138">bulk collection of communication data</a> relating to everyone’s online activities. GCHQ has been accused of conducting mass surveillance, and there is no doubt that these revelations have damaged the reputation of it and the security services among some in the UK and worldwide.</p>
<p>However, GCHQ’s other important role is as a source of cyber-security expertise. It helped develop the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-cyber-security-strategy-2011-2016-annual-report">National Cyber Security Strategy</a> and has been working hard to implement it alongside the UK government, industry and academia. In October 2016, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-national-cyber-security-centre-set-to-bring-uk-expertise-together">National Cyber Security Centre will open</a> and will oversee many of these activities. GCHQ employs many cyber-security specialists and is supporting the training of even more. Put simply, there is a lot of cyber-security expertise in GCHQ.</p>
<p>So if there is to be a Great British Firewall, GCHQ seems like the logical organisation to provide it. Private companies will be given the opportunity to choose whether to trust GCHQ as their firewall guard. So long as they are genuinely free to make this decision for themselves, and their customers are aware of this relationship, then this might well be workable. Achieving security in cyberspace inevitably requires placing faith in some organisations – why not trust one that knows a great deal about cyber-security?</p>
<p>Of course there is a precedent: the use of the Great Firewall of China by the Chinese government to censor internet content is infamous. Through constant tight monitoring of internet traffic the government blocks access to websites, filters or blocks searches for keywords, and monitors the population’s interactions in cyberspace. There is no doubt that the Great Firewall of China stifles freedom of speech and is used in an authoritarian, anti-democratic fashion. Other nations are also known to interfere with the global Domain Name System (DNS) that links domain names (such as theconversation.com) to the actual internet addresses used by the web servers for those sites. Filtering out DNS requests for certain domains and dropping them essentially prevents those domains from being accessed – certainly not in the spirit of the global open internet that many desire.</p>
<p>Is GCHQ proposing something equivalent? I suspect not, as the UK has a very different view of human rights and internet governance than in China. But there is a fine line between having the power to censor the internet, and choosing to implement that power. Returning to GCHQ’s two functions, while I suspect the security function of GCHQ has good intentions, the intelligence function of GCHQ does not have an unblemished record in this area. Something to think about before choosing to hide behind the Great British Firewall.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Martin receives funding from the EPSRC and the European Commission.</span></em></p>Having a nationwide firewall means trusting the same people who spy on communications.Keith Martin, Professor, Information Security Group, Royal HollowayLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/615062016-07-27T02:55:30Z2016-07-27T02:55:30ZThe backlash against open-plan offices: segmented space<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132102/original/image-20160727-7061-1k44gbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Open-plan offices may seem like a good idea but research shows they have a negative effect on employees.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Looking back on the changes in office design over the past 30 years, it is easy to see why some employees feel as if they have been subjects in a giant ongoing experiment.</p>
<p>For decades the office <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470971746.html">has moved</a> from private to open plan and, more recently, to no desk at all. These changes have been driven almost simultaneously by the push to reduce real estate cost and also to increase collaboration among employees.</p>
<p>While real estate cost savings appear to have been <a href="http://www.corenetglobal.org/">achieved</a>, the negative effects of the open-plan office on employees have now been well documented. A large body of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/078559809">research</a> shows these offices are noiser; employees have difficulties concentrating and are unable to hold private conversations. </p>
<p>The promise of increased collaboration in open plan appears to have very little evidence to support the idea. A <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000340">study</a> of more than 42,000 employees found that open-plan office environments did little to increase interaction.</p>
<p>Given all this evidence, it is perhaps unsurprising that a recent <a href="https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/when-the-walls-come-down">study</a> by Oxford Economics found the impact of open-plan office design is far greater than executives realise. The report found both productivity and employee peace of mind suffer in the open workplace. Although there appears to be a growing realisation of the negative effects, the results showed few companies have effective strategies in place to resolve these problems. </p>
<p>Another key issue in the open-plan office is that it doesn’t cater to either differences in individuals or differences in the type of work that needs to be undertaken. The time workers are spending on collaborative tasks is <a href="http://www.gensler.com/uploads/document/337/file/2013_US_Workplace_Survey_07_15_2013.pdf">decreasing</a>, while time on quiet concentrated work is increasing.</p>
<p>In response to these issues, organisations have been experimenting with ways to segment workplaces to overcome these problems. <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3021752/most-creative-people/why-square-designed-its-new-offices-to-work-like-a-city">Articles</a> on new office design are peppered with concepts such as “caves”, “campfires”, “town squares” and “city zones”. </p>
<p>The segmented office is based on the idea that different spaces are needed to support different tasks and different personalities. Sleep pods, library spaces, mobile-free zones and cafes are becoming standard <a href="http://www.iida.org/resources/category/9/4/1/documents/0104beyond.pdf">features</a> of new office designs.</p>
<p>Employees are encouraged to move between the different areas based on what they are doing at the time. Tasks such as taking a phone call, holding a meeting, doing work that requires focus and quiet or work that needs collaboration with others are all allocated separate areas.</p>
<p>While <a>some employees</a> see this as a positive move, the changes often don’t go far enough to allow concentrated, productive work. What if your co-workers are just noisy people in general?</p>
<p>Julian Treasure, sound consultant and author of the book Sound Business, suggests employees are <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_the_4_ways_sound_affects_us?language=en">one-third</a> as productive in open-plan office designs as in quiet rooms. In research I am conducting, many employees report that having to find a space to work each morning is tiring, while others resent having to move around to do different tasks. </p>
<p>The practicality of moving to different spaces while carrying laptops, power cords and other documents and materials needed to complete work can be tiresome at best and impractical at worst. The inability to find co-workers when needed appears to be another common complaint in early results of the study I am undertaking. Some employees opt out of IT-based location identification systems in order not to be interrupted.</p>
<p>Other key issues emerging in my research are that often the number of phone booths and meeting rooms is limited. This results in wasted time and frustration trying to find somewhere to meet or take a call. </p>
<p>When the need for confidential conversations arise, such issues often need to be dealt with immediately. Employees report to me that finding private places to converse in such situations is challenging – being told to “book a room” or “go to a coffee shop” is not uncommon. </p>
<p>The overall office size in Australia is relatively small. As a result, <a href="http://architectureau.com/articles/ansarada/">offices</a> being designed to embrace the segmented idea can end up having a gym with a rowing machine as well as the cafe space within metres of the open-plan desk area.</p>
<p>It seems we still have a way to go. Recent research in the <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/05/7-factors-of-great-office-design">Harvard Business Review</a> indicates the push for collaboration is too much of a good thing; staff are increasingly demanding quiet spaces to work where they can focus and concentrate. </p>
<p>With many working from home or other third places to get work done, does the office still matter? </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cubed-History-Workplace-Nikil-Saval/dp/0385536577">authors</a> suggest the office will die out altogether. Nikil Saval, in his book Cubed, goes so far as to suggest leisure is over as the office follows its employees everywhere thanks to the cloud. </p>
<p>Yet the imperative to get it right appears more important than ever. While we may indeed be able to work from anywhere, it seems we still want to come to the office.</p>
<p>Two-thirds of <a href="https://twitter.com/MMWorkplace/status/753250299364638720?lang=en">employees prefer</a> to build relationships face-to-face, and the majority prefer to build that connection in an ideal workplace. How we create the ideal workplace remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Libby Sander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.</span></em></p>An open-plan office is not all it's cracked up to be but the alternative, segmented spaces, has its downsides as well.Libby Sander, Lecturer, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/591032016-05-16T13:39:50Z2016-05-16T13:39:50ZWho is your best friend when you are looking for work?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122309/original/image-20160512-16414-1xo6plf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Keep your friends close, keep your acquaintances closer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tess_marie/6900491360/in/photolist-bvLPEY-iptYrL-bJFBnB-ipu1S7-iptEVv-ipuJpT-k26VmV-ipuKV8-k274qa-k26K9F-ipsSeX-ipuv7c-iptEKF-4hdUTJ-k26LeX-k21sDD-k24Rpa-83PfhV-othez-5BUyG-k24tdB-k24Bkt-k21fAR-4eie6r-4eWMBx-ipsXTS-ipufdJ-ipsZ9u-ipugBs-7TpPZ8-7mqPUu-94EcJg-5LDsTX-4dDcr8-eMfrbW-fAaYES-boA4g9-5Axiq4-q7EjCY-9hk2E5-7CK1bB-9chSab-7D5rwA-k26NHz-4h9RfR-k24QJH-k23JHN-7Fvtya-42bUBJ-82y9">Tess Dixon/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people claim to have a broad social circle, but we are all more likely to consider only a handful of people as our “close” friends. These are the ones we turn to when we want advice or company. More importantly though, friends like these can give empathy and support at a time of need. Finding yourself out of work involuntarily is clearly just such a moment, and so naturally, you turn to your closest friends for help getting back in the job market. That’s what friends are for, right? </p>
<p>Well, maybe not. Contrary to received wisdom, most <a href="https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/the_strength_of_weak_ties_and_exch_w-gans.pdf">social science research</a> <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095914?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">suggests</a> that you <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/4/4/785">are better off</a> scrolling down the contacts’ list on your smartphone (or flicking through the pages of an old phonebook) to contact those outside your inner circle – acquaintances, if you will. Success with a job or career search seems to work better this way. But why?</p>
<p>Close friends (and by “close” I mean the people you are in regular contact with) are more likely to be either colleagues or ex-colleagues of some form. Or they may live in the same place as you. In contrast, your extended network of friends is likely to be made up of people from a mix of locations and include a diverse mixture of occupations and professions. This group will be exposed to more and different kinds of job-related information. Think of it like your own personal hive mind, where the availability and flow of information from them to you is crucial.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=292&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=292&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=292&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=367&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=367&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122325/original/image-20160512-16431-nl5gg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=367&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Right for you?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/187602529/in/photolist-hzvGn-5hc9uK-f6gJtG-dUvprx-4Xpo2Q-eYQEv8-s7UWnA-57YQBi-5nSzkk-bkEcGF-LBELz-qSmVh-AqqU8-GhYQWq-5jpMo3-5jHUWn-81V4AG-4eRJ6x-5oeFVd-5mAZps-5jHXMR-968txx-5jN7ku-5i4aoo-5pFdwU-b4sa6P-fb7T6j-8X1U2A-bMXsup-cztXtf-5kWo52-u9X9e-5jYbsT-5jMRz7-6yra75-byYQZj-9Mvv9p-bkKB18-dwhWBN-dkBGy4-u9X9g-7f4oq9-dNRHYq-5h1Mb5-qeMpr1-8X1U2G-5o2bi9-5pqdHd-2eT65o-486ssh">Allen/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The trouble is that your close, employed friends – while their support might be invaluable – are likely to be privy to the same information as you. Your acquaintances, on the other hand, work for different employers, have diverse experiences and they themselves have friends who work elsewhere and so on. It is a numbers game. By getting job-related information from multiple points of origin – think tips about upcoming vacancies, or advice on search strategies, applications and interviews – you maximise the chances of finding work.</p>
<h2>Horses for courses</h2>
<p>Now, the above might suggest that your immediate social circle is of less value while you’re looking for work. This is not true. Indeed, <a href="http://asr.sagepub.com/content/70/3/408.full.pdf">a number</a> <a href="http://wox.sagepub.com/content/8/1/119.abstract">of studies</a> propose that they can be equally effective and bring great value in key areas.</p>
<p>Acquaintances will bring more job opportunities to your attention, but your friends know your skills, flaws, aptitudes, disposition and career aspirations and are thus able to screen both you and various job openings. In theory, that should lead to fewer but higher-quality suggestions. Employers are aware of such within network processes and any personal recommendations <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119002005132">tend to be viewed more favourably</a> than speculative approaches or referrals. Such recruitment channels can mean less employee turnover and reduced hiring and firing costs – after all, you are more likely to commit more to a job when sharing a workplace with friends. </p>
<p>Men’s social networks (of similar size) <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.473.6889&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf">appear to be more effective</a> in helping in a job search, which could be due to either women’s friends having less influence in hiring processes, or that women are seen as <a href="http://wes.sagepub.com/content/13/2/205.abstract">more likely to be voluntarily unemployed</a> than men.</p>
<p>But for women, the effect of social networks on their labour market behaviour has an additional dimension. What we know is that <a href="http://wes.sagepub.com/content/13/2/205.abstract">the composition of women’s social circle</a> matters.
Women’s social networks are better at providing them with social support, such as in childcare. And the availability and affordability of childcare is <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.473.6889&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf">a core factor</a> in many women’s <a href="http://ser.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/2/343.abstract">decision to return to paid work</a>. </p>
<p>In this case, the effect of friends operates through a a subsidiary channel in tandem with that of information distribution. A friend may not be able to offer a job recommendation but may be able to mind the kids for a few hours every week, allowing the mother to commit to a full or part time job. Equally, someone could offer financial assistance during a work-related training period while other friends could provide vacancy information.</p>
<h2>Virtuous circle</h2>
<p>Using your networks to exit unemployment brings obvious material and psychological gains to the individual. But why is your network important for the rest of society? </p>
<p>For a start, it means public employment services such as <a href="https://www.gov.uk/contact-jobcentre-plus">Jobcentre Plus</a> or <a href="https://www.gov.uk/jobsearch">Universal Jobmatch</a> in the UK can broaden their reach beyond job seekers in direct contact. Anyone who returns to work becomes a potential source of information to their social network. Additionally, someone may come across a job ad which may not be suitable for themselves but can be passed on through their network. This process can be particularly beneficial for those more “passive” job seekers – people who have perhaps become discouraged after long unsuccessful periods of job search. They are more likely to follow up a friend’s suggestion than actively going through job postings themselves. </p>
<p>The second advantage is that broad social networks – both traditional and of the Facebook age – can allow people to escape the trap of belonging to a kind of economic underclass where people out of work interact mostly, if not exclusively, with other unemployed people. A narrow cohort of close friends can encourage social exclusion as well as economic, social and, possibly, geographical marginalisation. Every unemployed person who can find work by calling on a wider circle of acquaintances in employment helps to grow that crucial wider network for others. It is indeed a virtuous circle.</p>
<p>We currently have little evidence on the exact magnitude of the effect of social networks on the probability of finding work, but we can confidently say that such an effect exists. We can also say that regardless how close a friend is, they can potentially provide invaluable help with finding work. You just have to make sure you’re using the right tool for the right job.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Panos Sousounis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Those closest to you might not be able to get you back on your feet.Panos Sousounis, Lecturer in Economics, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/517472015-12-08T23:27:53Z2015-12-08T23:27:53ZYour broadband router is not as secure as you think it is<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104820/original/image-20151208-3147-devo78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Your broadband router might not look like much, but it&#39;s your first line of defence against cyber attack.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt J Newman/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Between your home network and the internet sits your broadband router. This humble device is often overlooked, yet it is also your first line of defence against hackers, malware and viruses. </p>
<p>It’s easy to assume that the latest firmware for your router will provide protection against cyber threats. However, our new research has found that even the latest broadband router firmware remains dangerously vulnerable to attack.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=628&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=628&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=628&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=789&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=789&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104593/original/image-20151207-22689-1lj68gy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=789&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A simple overview of what makes your router go.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nikolai Hampton</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Firmware is the operating system and software that controls all the features of your router, from the blinking lights and configuration options, to advanced network security features. Similar to any desktop operating system, firmware can contain thousands of system files, any of which may contain security vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>Just like any software you would install on your laptop or personal computer, it needs to be maintained and updated frequently to mitigate known security vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, we have found that even the latest firmware contains security holes.</p>
<h2>Obsolete software</h2>
<p>To test how secure these devices really are, we extracted the firmware from 37 currently available broadband routers. We then reverse engineered the firmware to analyse components such as the operating system, system libraries and executable files. This allowed us to construct a comprehensive database of devices, software versions and known vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>We found that 90% of the components analysed were more than six years old. In every firmware we found obsolete software with known security issues, regardless of the manufacturer or release date. </p>
<p>Old software may not sound like a big deal. However, security experts agree that all developers should start from a solid base, building upon well maintained and up-to-date software components.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=279&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=279&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=279&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=351&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=351&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104354/original/image-20151204-29702-1q1t5ox.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=351&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Timeline of selected significant software components - a historic perspective.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nikolai Hampton</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet many people probably don’t realise that critical security vulnerabilities identified a decade ago are still present. Cyber threats evolve rapidly, and six months is a long time, two years an eternity, and a decade – well, you get the picture!</p>
<p>Obsolete components often have security issues that are so well known that common security testing tools and hacking software even incorporate their exploits into simple “point-and-click” interfaces. So old firmware components are a major concern.</p>
<h2>It’s not just routers</h2>
<p>Internet of Things (<a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/internet-of-things">IoT</a>) and smart devices are also powered by firmware. If the pattern we have found continues, then it won’t be long before we find a piece of malware that can infect your internet enabled refrigerator.</p>
<p>Our latest research has started “cracking open” IoT devices. The first device examined was a 2015 internet enabled security camera that had an obsolete operating system and key security components from 2008.</p>
<p>While alarming, our research does not suggest that consumer routers are being attacked frequently or on a large scale. It does, however, indicate an environment where attacks are likely to increase in frequency and severity in the near future.</p>
<p>So you can follow best cyber security practices and still fail to be adequately protected. You may also have a false sense of security if you believe the latest firmware will provide adequate protection. In reality, the core components of most router firmware are built on open source software released up to a decade ago, and (on many occasions) maintained by part-time enthusiasts rather than professionals.</p>
<p>Broadband routers are clearly vulnerable to a range of cyber security threats and manufacturers have little incentive to improve their firmware development practices at the moment. The lack of transparency, accountability and user education breeds an environment that rewards first-to-market devices with multimedia capabilities or stylish antennas, rather than robust security.</p>
<h2>How can you protect yourself?</h2>
<p>Our research does not suggest that all firmware updates are a waste of time. The problem is the lack of transparency; we simply don’t know what is included in our device firmware.</p>
<p>The best advice remains keeping all of your devices up-to-date.</p>
<p>You can also get better protection by using a multi-layer defences, such as virus scanners and firewalls. The Windows operating system comes with built-in services, including <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/windows-defender.aspx">Windows Defender</a> and Windows Firewall. You should make sure that these services are installed, up-to-date and running as a matter of priority. </p>
<p>Third-party anti-virus scanners can help, but some people may find them more intrusive than beneficial. Third party products can also contain unwanted programs and tool bars that can slow your computer or internet connection. You should read a range of product reviews before deciding on what software to trust.</p>
<p>The problem can only be truly fixed by manufacturers. Consumers and IT professionals must demand better security, but without further independent device analysis, many people won’t be equipped to understand the security issues or implications. This is an area that needs serious attention.</p>
<p>We have proposed a range of long term solutions, including a security star rating system, to help users understand how their device compares. We are hopeful that the industry, security experts and end-users can work together to achieve meaningful security improvements, before the threat of mass cyber attacks becomes an every day reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51747/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nikolai Hampton is a part owner and director of Impression Research. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patryk Szewczyk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research has found the firmware that runs most broadband routers is years out of date and riddled with potential security holes.Patryk Szewczyk, Lecturer, Edith Cowan UniversityNikolai Hampton, Master of Cyber Security Candidate, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/506642015-11-19T04:24:48Z2015-11-19T04:24:48ZThe big data challenge and how Africa can benefit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102326/original/image-20151118-14214-1vxrw3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Large Hadron Collider is playing a key role in enabling the collection of big data. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-big-data-13780">Big data</a> has become some sort of celebrity. Everybody talks about it, but it is not clear what it is. To unpack its relevance to society it is important to backtrack a bit to understand why and how it came to be this ubiquitous problem.</p>
<p>Big data is about processing large amounts of data. It is associated with multiplicities of data formats stored somewhere, say in a <a href="http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-computing">cloud</a> or in distributed computing systems. </p>
<p>But the ability to generate data systematically outpaces the ability to store it. The amount of data is becoming so big and is produced so fast that it cannot be stored with current technologies in a cost effective way. What happens when big data becomes too big and too fast?</p>
<h2>How fundamental science contributes to society</h2>
<p>The big data problem is yet another example of how the methods and techniques developed by scientists to study nature have had an impact on society. The techno-economic fabric that underlies modern society would be unthinkable without these contributions.</p>
<p>There are numerous examples of how findings intended to probe nature ended up revolutionising life. Big data is intimately intertwined with fundamental science and continues to evolve with it.</p>
<p>Consider just a few examples: what would life be without electricity or electromagnetic waves? Without the fundamental studies of <a href="http://www.phy.pmf.unizg.hr/%7Edpaar/fizicari/xmaxwell.html">Maxwell</a>, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1925/hertz-bio.html">Hertz</a> and other physicists on the nature of <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/electromagnetism">electromagnetism</a> we would not have radio, television or other forms of wave mediated communication, for that matter.</p>
<p>Modern electronics is based on materials called <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/semiconductor">semi-conductors</a>. What would life today be without <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/electronics">electronics</a>? The invention of transistors and eventually of integrated circuits is based entirely on the work scientists have done by thoroughly studying semi-conductors.</p>
<p>Modern medicine relies on countless techniques and applications. These range from x-rays, medical imaging physics and nuclear magnetic resonance to other techniques such as radiation therapeutic and nuclear medicine physics. Modern medicine and research would be unthinkable without techniques that were initially conceived for scientific research purposes.</p>
<h2>How the information age came about</h2>
<p>The big data problem initially emerged as a result of the need for scientists to communicate and exchange data.</p>
<p>At the European laboratory <a href="http://home.cern/">CERN</a> in 1990, internet pioneer <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/">Tim Berners-Lee</a> suggested a browser called <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html">WorldWideWeb</a>, leading to the first web server. The internet was born. </p>
<p>The internet has magnified the ability to exchange information and learn, leading to a proliferation of data.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t only about volume. The time lapsing between the generation and processing of information has also been greatly reduced.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://home.cern/topics/large-hadron-collider">Large Hadron Collider</a> has pushed the boundaries of data collection to limits never seen before.</p>
<p>When the project, and its experiments, were being conceived in the late 1980s scientists realised that new concepts and techniques needed to be developed to deal with streams of data that were bigger than had ever been seen before. </p>
<p>It was then that concepts that contributed to cloud and distributed computing were developed.</p>
<p>One of the main tasks of the Large Hadron Collider is to observe and explore the <a href="http://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson">Higgs boson</a>, a particle connected with the generation of mass of fundamental particles, by means of colliding protons at high energy. </p>
<p>The probability of finding a Higgs boson in a high-energy proton-proton collision is extremely small. For this reason it is necessary to collide many protons many times every second. </p>
<p>The Large Hadron Collider produces data flows of the order of petabytes every second. To give an idea of how big a petabyte is, the entire written works of mankind from beginning of written history, in all languages, can be stored in about 50 petabytes. An experiment at the Large Hadron Collider generates that much data in less than one minute.</p>
<p>Only a small fraction of the data produced is stored. But even this has already reached the exabyte scale (one thousand times a petabyte) leading to new challenges in distributed and cloud computing.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ska.ac.za/about/index.php">Square Kilometre Array</a> (SKA) in South Africa will start generating data in the 2020s. SKA will have the processing power of about 100 million PCs. The <a href="https://www.skatelescope.org/">data</a> it collects in a single day would take nearly two million years to play back on an iPod.</p>
<p>This will produce new challenges for the correlation of vast amounts of data.</p>
<h2>Big data and Africa</h2>
<p>The African continent often lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to embracing innovation. Nevertheless big data is increasingly being seen as a solution to tackling poverty on the continent.</p>
<p>The private sector has been the first to get out of the starting blocks.
The bigger African firms are, naturally, more likely to have big data projects. In Nigeria and <a href="http://www.africanbusinessreview.co.za/technology/1783/Big-Data-in-Africa:-IBM-Dissects-a-Developing-Trend-in-a-Developing-Market">Kenya</a> at least 40% of businesses are in the planning stages of a big data project compared with the global average of 51%. Only 24% of medium companies in the two countries are planning big data projects.</p>
<p>Rich rewards can be reaped from harnessing big data. For example, healthcare organisations can benefit from <a href="http://www.hissjournal.com/content/2/1/3">digitising</a>, combining and effectively using big data. This could enable a range of players, from single-physician offices and multi-provider groups to large hospital networks, to deliver better and more effective services. </p>
<p>Grasping the challenge of managing big data could have big economic spin-offs too. With economies becoming more and more sophisticated and complex the amount of data generated increases rapidly. As a result, in order to improve these complex processes it is necessary to process and understand increasing volumes of data. With this labour productivity is enhanced. </p>
<p>But for any of these benefits to become reality, Africa needs specialists who are proficient in big data techniques. Universities on the continent need to start teaching how big data can be used to find solutions to scientific problems. A sophisticated economy requires specialists who are skilled in big data techniques.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Mellado receives funding from the DST, NRF and the University of the Witwatersrand. </span></em></p>Big data is about processing large amounts of data. It is often associated with multiplicities of data. But the ability to generate data outpaces the ability to store it.Bruce Mellado, Professor of Physics, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/475272015-09-28T14:46:41Z2015-09-28T14:46:41ZIn future, the internet could come through your lightbulb<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94856/original/image-20150915-29648-1ctkmbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mightyohm/2648853050/in/photostream/">mightyohm</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The tungsten lightbulb has served well over the century or so since it was introduced, but its days are numbered now with the arrival of LED lighting, which consume a tenth of the power of incandescent bulbs and have a lifespan 30 times longer. Potential uses of LEDs are not limited to illumination: smart lighting products are emerging that can offer various additional features, including linking your laptop or smartphone to the internet. Move over Wi-Fi, Li-Fi is here.</p>
<p>Wireless communication with visible light is, in fact, not a new idea. Everyone knows about using smoke signals on a desert island to try to capture attention. Perhaps less well known is that in the time of Napoleon much of <a href="http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/12/email-in-the-18.html">Europe was covered with optical telegraphs</a>, otherwise known as the semaphore. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=443&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=443&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=443&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=557&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=557&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94843/original/image-20150915-29651-16bav8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=557&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The photophone, with speech carried over reflected light.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photophone_transmitter_4074931746_9f996df841_b.jpg">Amédée Guillemin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, actually regarded the photophone as his most important invention, a device that used a mirror to relay the vibrations caused by speech <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/alexander-graham-bells-wireless-phone-that-ran-on-sunshine">over a beam of light</a>. </p>
<p>In the same way that interrupting (modulating) a plume of smoke can break it into parts that form an SOS message in Morse code, so visible light communications – Li-Fi – rapidly modulates the intensity of a light to encode data as binary zeros and ones. But this doesn’t mean that Li-Fi transceivers will flicker; the modulation will be too fast for the eye to see.</p>
<h2>Wi-Fi vs Li-Fi</h2>
<p>The enormous and growing user demand for wireless data is placing huge pressure on existing Wi-Fi technology, which uses the radio and microwave frequency spectrum. With exponential growth of mobile devices, by 2019 more than ten billion devices are expected to exchange around <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white_paper_c11-520862.html">35 quintillion (10<sup>18)</sup> bytes of information each month</a>. This won’t be possible using existing wireless technology due to frequency congestion and electromagnetic interference. The problem is most acutely felt in public spaces in urban areas, where many users try to share the limited capacity available from Wi-Fi transmitters or mobile phone network cell towers.</p>
<p>A fundamental communications principle is that the maximum data transfer possible scales with the electromagnetic frequency bandwidth available. The radio frequency spectrum is heavily used and regulated, and there just isn’t enough additional space to satisfy the growth in demand. So Li-Fi has the potential to replace radio and microwave frequency Wi-Fi. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=321&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=321&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=321&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=403&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=403&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94844/original/image-20150915-29611-ofi5b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=403&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Light frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum are underused, while to either side is congested.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EM_spectrum.svg">Philip Ronan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Visible light spectrum has huge, unused and unregulated capacity for communications. The light from LEDs can be modulated very quickly: data rates as high as 3.5Gb/s using a single blue LED or 1.7Gb/s with white light have been demonstrated by researchers in our EPSRC-funded <a href="http://up-vlc.photonics.ac.uk">Ultra-Parallel Visible Light Communications</a> programme.</p>
<p>Unlike Wi-Fi transmitters, optical communications are well-confined inside the walls of a room. This confinement might seem to be a limitation for Li-Fi, but it offers the key advantage that it is very secure: if the curtains are drawn then nobody outside the room can eavesdrop. An array of light sources in the ceiling could send different signals to different users. The transmitter power can be localised, more efficiently used and won’t interfere with adjacent Li-Fi sources. Indeed the lack of radio frequency interference is another advantage over Wi-Fi. Visible light communications is intrinsically safe, and could end the need for travellers to switch devices to flight mode. </p>
<p>A further advantage of Li-Fi is that it can use existing power lines as LED lighting so no new infrastructure is needed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=411&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=411&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=411&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=516&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=516&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94855/original/image-20150915-29630-jeco4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=516&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How a Li-Fi network would work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Boston University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lightening the burden of the internet of things</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/internet-of-things">internet of things</a> is an ambitious vision of a hyper-connected world of objects autonomously communicating with each other. For example, your fridge might inform your smartphone that you have run out of milk, and even order it for you. Sensors in your car will directly alert you though your smartphone that your tyres are too worn or have low pressure. </p>
<p>Given the number of “things” that can be fitted with sensors and controllers then network-enabled and connected, the bandwidth needed for all these devices to communicate is vast. Industry monitor Gartner predicts that <a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/business-intelligence/24502/it-pro-panel-how-the-iot-will-change-your-business">25 billion such devices</a> will be connected by 2020, but given that most of this information needs only to be transferred a short distance, Li-Fi is an attractive – and perhaps the only – solution to making this a reality.</p>
<p>Several companies are already offering products for visible light communications. The <a href="http://purelifi.com/lifi-products/li-1st/">Li-1st</a> from PureLiFi, based in Edinburgh, offers a simple plug-and-play solution for secure wireless point-to-point internet access with a capacity of 11.5 Mbps – comparable to first generation Wi-Fi. Another is <a href="http://www.oledcomm.com/">Oledcomm</a> from France, which exploits the safe, non-radio frequency nature of Li-Fi with installations in hospitals. </p>
<p>There are still many technological challenges to tackle but already the first steps have been taken to make Li-Fi a reality. In the future your light switch will turn on much more than just illumination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pavlos Manousiadis receives funding from EPSRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Turnbull is an investigator in the EPSRC programme grant Ultra-parallel Visible Light Communications (EP/K00042X/1). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ifor Samuel is an investigator in the EPSRC programme grant Ultra-parallel Visible Light Communications (EP/K00042X/1).</span></em></p>Internet connectivity via your lightbulb? It's already possible with LED lights that can enlighten as well as lighten.Pavlos Manousiadis, Research Fellow, University of St AndrewsGraham Turnbull, Professor, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St AndrewsIfor Samuel, Professor of Polymer Optoelectronics, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/462232015-08-26T04:03:11Z2015-08-26T04:03:11ZStrong networks can dilute sexism in higher education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92793/original/image-20150824-17793-utvty4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Powerful, supportive academic networks can offer women a buffer against sexism and patriarchy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122466/gender-bias-plagues-academia">academia</a>, as in other professional spaces, women are fighting an uphill battle against <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/diversity/2014/03/acceptable-sexism-unconscious-bias-in-the-workplace/">sexism</a>. Sometimes this manifests in subtle but insidious ways such as <a href="http://time.com/3836977/un-women-wages-and-careers/">unequal pay</a> and biased hiring practices. In other cases, women have to fight off blatant <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102172">harassment and even assault</a>.</p>
<p>In many countries, there are also <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-12-universities-remain-a-bastion-of-gender-discrimination-too">far more men</a> in senior academic positions than women.</p>
<p>Even <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/feb/13/female-academics-huge-sexist-bias-students">students</a> discriminate against female professors and rate them as <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-female-faculty-get-bonus-points-to-correct-for-gender-bias-in-student-evaluations-43166">less competent</a> than their male counterparts. This is hugely galling: surely higher education should be one place where brain always triumphs over brawn?</p>
<p>For all these problems, I feel at home in academia. I see my future here and I’m actively recruiting more female scientists into my research group. But am I just setting them up for a lifetime of struggling to find happiness in academic institutions?</p>
<p>I don’t think so - because while gender inequality is a pervasive problem that may take generations to fix, there is a home for women in academia right now. Here are a few useful strategies that can help individual women thrive in higher education spaces.</p>
<h2>Networks are buffers</h2>
<p>For starters, do not underestimate the value of strong networks. In the postgraduate space, picking one’s supervisor and research group carefully can provide an excellent buffer against institutionalised sexism.</p>
<p>This isn’t to say that women should automatically pick a woman supervisor. My MSc and PhD were supervised by the <a href="http://academic.sun.ac.za/botzoo/cherry/">same man</a> and my PhD co-supervisor was a <a href="http://www.ieu.uzh.ch/staff/professors/mmanser.html">woman</a>. My postdoctorate was supervised by <a href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/thore.bergman/home">a man</a>. I didn’t pick any of these mentors based on their sex, though.</p>
<p>Here’s how I chose them: they are all excellent scientists. They publish well, appear to enjoy their jobs and clearly enjoy expanding their mental horizons. They are not threatened by the success of younger academics like me and always appeared to hardly notice my sex. </p>
<p>Another crucial element was that all my supervisors had other - happy - women in their research groups. For example, the research group I’d joined for my postdoc was co-directed by an outstanding female <a href="https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/jbeehner/">scientist</a> and the female postgrads outnumbered the males.</p>
<p>Research has <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131613">revealed</a> that dominant males who are at the top of their professional games don’t tend to bother with sexism. They know they are good at their work and don’t need to pick on women to soothe their own egos.</p>
<p>This makes evolutionary sense. Low ranking olive baboons and even hamsters will try to relieve the stress of being on the losing end of most fights by <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=bxlZTWCRXt0C&amp;pg=PA49&amp;lpg=PA49&amp;dq=%22redirected+aggression%22+%22subordinate+males%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=0ho6vhpGE9&amp;sig=CY6uzVC1pCxe-ucz3IdKht2DkGU&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;q=%22redirected%20aggression%22%20%22subordinate%20males%22&amp;f=false">redirecting their aggression</a> towards soft targets. </p>
<p>So if at all possible, pick a supervisor who is clearly successful, always learning and works with active young male and female researchers. </p>
<h2>Find your niche</h2>
<p>Even as a postgraduate student, it can be difficult to carve out a unique research niche. Your supervisor is calling a lot of the shots and his or her research interests often dictate yours.</p>
<p>But these constraints shouldn’t stop you from asking good, incisive questions. Look at data differently and explore beyond your mentor’s instructions. It’s important to inject original thoughts into your Masters and doctoral research and to work towards uniqueness. This will help you build your own brand as an academic.</p>
<p>For women, these efforts are another buffer against sexism. Making your own name, creating your own direction and developing your own expertise makes you an asset. Despite the patriarchal mindset that dominates most large institutions, the idea of gender equality is at least on their radar.</p>
<p>Give them a reason to support you: shout at them through your work. </p>
<h2>Speak up</h2>
<p>These buffers won’t completely protect women academics from sexism. We are living and working in a male dominated society. I’ve learned that in some meetings, men will be addressed by their titles while I and other women are called by our first names. Occasionally, I catch a man staring at my chest instead of listening to me talk.</p>
<p>Increasingly, I call the perpetrator out on their “isms” or phobias. If you hate conflict, start small. Politely point out someone’s bias and gradually build up the courage to take them on when they are completely out of line.</p>
<p>Sometimes you will have to grit your teeth - the good news is that many older offenders are probably just a moment away from retirement.</p>
<h2>A fight worth having</h2>
<p>Trying to change entrenched sexism from within a system can feel overwhelming. Many women are also scared that promoting themselves will be seen as arrogant and may even earn them <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/01/women-and-work">lower ratings</a> from colleagues.</p>
<p>Some are suffering from <a href="http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/12/11/the-imposter-syndrome-or-as-my-mother-told-me-just-because-everyone-else-is-an-asshole-it-doesnt-make-you-a-fraud-a-guest-post/">imposter syndrome</a> and fear that they don’t actually deserve recognition for their success.</p>
<p>Remind yourself why you want to be in academia (for instance, I have an insatiable curiosity about the way animals work). Arm yourself with <a href="http://www.toolsforchangeinstem.org/gender-bias-in-stem/">information</a>, seek advice from those who have been through it all before - and build a strong academic support network. Together, we may be able to boot sexism out of research labs, lecture halls and administrative ivory towers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aliza le Roux receives funding from the National Research Foundation, and is part of the South African Young Academy of Science, a society seeking to bridge the gap between science and society. She is affiliated with the University of the Free State, Qwaqwa.</span></em></p>While gender inequality is a pervasive problem in academia, there is a home in universities for women right now. Here's how to make it a happy one.Aliza le Roux, Senior Lecturer , University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441982015-07-03T16:05:23Z2015-07-03T16:05:23ZWhy it makes sense for BT to shut down its telephone network<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87171/original/image-20150702-11303-1y5ugbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The telephone network is dead, long live telephone calls!</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/guy_hatton/79360356/in/photostream/">guy_hatton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the telecoms regulator Ofcom embarks on its next strategic review of the UK’s telecommunications services, BT has called for it to be allowed to close down its telephone network. Perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, this actually makes sense.</p>
<p>As Ofcom’s studies confirm that landline and mobile telephone call use <a href="http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/communications-market-reports/cmr14/telecoms-networks/uk-5.28">continues to fall</a>, telecoms companies have faced mounting pressures to find other ways of making money. </p>
<p>BT, like many others, has sought to diversify by offering so-called “quad play” packages, common in the US, which bundle together telephone, broadband, mobile and television services. So it could be said that BT is as much a television company as it is telephone company these days. The world has moved on, and BT with it. </p>
<p>However, BT and KCOM Group (formerly Kingston Communications, serving Hull) are alone within the industry as they are designated by the Communications Act 2003 as “universal service providers”. This means that both companies must provide basic telephone services on request and at the same price to all customers throughout their areas of influence.</p>
<p>In the 12 years since the world has changed dramatically: in 2003 people were starting to switch their internet access from dial-up modems to the new, speedier connection called “broadband”. The UK’s first, relatively primitive <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2808761.stm">3G mobile phone network</a> opened, the Freeview digital television service turned one year old, and BBC iPlayer was still many years in the future.</p>
<p>Today in 2015 the internet is everything; the average UK adult now spends more time per day interacting with connected digital technology <a href="http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/communications-market-reports/cmr14/uk/">than sleeping</a>, and the average household has at least three internet-connected devices.</p>
<p>BT’s argument is that the future is not telephones but digital services over the internet. BT has an entire network built to handle the telephone calls of the last century (and the century before that) - the so-called Plain Old Telephone System (POTS). The rest of its network is a modern telecommunications network that’s digital right up to the cable that connects the exchange to the home, which carries both voice and data signals. Today telephony is just another service that can be delivered over the internet – why do we need a large and expensive network dedicated to offering telephone services? </p>
<h2>POTS and kettles</h2>
<p>The answer is we don’t. Telephone services can be provided in what’s called an “over-the-top” service running on a data network. The mobile industry has already recognised this and re-designed its networks accordingly. While first-generation, second (2G) and third (3G) networks provided both voice and data, today’s fast 4G networks are data only. Voice calls are just another form of network traffic like web browsing, social media or streaming video.</p>
<p>BT (or more accurately its arms-length <a href="https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/index.do">Openreach</a> division which provides the infrastructure), argues that it wants to do the same, but its hands are tied by the legally-binding requirements of the “universal service” clause of the Communications Act.</p>
<p>However, we need to be very careful here with our terminology. According to Ofcom, <a href="http://media.ofcom.org.uk/facts/">16% of UK adults now live in a mobile-only household</a>. This means those people rely solely on their mobile phones for making telephone calls and don’t have a landline telephone. Does this mean Openreach has removed their telephone line? No, because that same line is what provides broadband services to our homes – you can have a telephone line without connecting a telephone to it.</p>
<p>BT’s argument is that today the concept of a universal service has become a millstone around its neck that forces it to maintain a large and outdated telephone network at great cost to support telephone exchanges that fewer and fewer people use.</p>
<p>Despite the growing trend that sees people using apps such as Skype, Viber or Whatsapp to communicate through the internet, the companies responsible have no requirement upon them to build or maintain their own networks – they rely on those provided by telecoms firms. Why should BT be lumbered with offering a basic telephone service to all, when the same thing can be achieved via broadband? Scrapping its network that is solely responsible for providing a telephone service would allow BT to re-invest in the further development of its broadband and internet provision and so compete more freely with other “over the top” providers.</p>
<p>There is of course an obvious caveat to all of this: the concept of universal service is to ensure that every household has access to basic telephone services. This remains an important and worthy obligation, it’s just that there are now other ways of achieving it. That’s the point that Ofcom really needs to grasp: scrapping the telephone network does not mean scrapping the telephone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Linge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why should BT be required to provide a telephone service no one wants or needs?Nigel Linge, Professor, Computer Networking and Telecommunications, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/369952015-02-05T06:17:21Z2015-02-05T06:17:21ZWhy Apple is the world's most successful company – the power of networks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71098/original/image-20150204-28578-7qf35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Apple&#39;s global network control has helped it achieve bumper profits.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrey Bayda / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest round of quarterly results have recently come out and the likes of <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3bb354a-a666-11e4-89e5-00144feab7de.html">Apple</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-boeing-results-idUSKBN0L11EP20150128">Boeing</a> have announced bumper profits. Others such as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/christmas-jumpers-and-prosecco-help-sainsburys-beat-christmas-sales-forecast-9962024.html">Sainsbury’s</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31033639">Samsung</a> have not fared so well. So what is it that makes some big multinational corporations so successful? One answer can be found in their ability to control networks. </p>
<p>The global economy is made up of a series of networks that link customers with providers from all corners of the world. These networks consist of chains of linked corporations that bring these products to our doorsteps – from coffee growers in Columbia through logistics companies to the coffee burner at Nestle and the shop around the corner. Once companies have gained a strong position in these networks, they can then enhance and modify them to suit their business. </p>
<p>Companies that succeed position themselves at the centre of these networks and then manipulate their structure and foundations. Mostly, entrepreneurship rests on three forms of networking and network building: controlling the network they are part of, bridging it with others and creating new one.</p>
<h2>Gaining control</h2>
<p>Good entrepreneurs seek to occupy positions of control and power in the economic networks in which they operate. They do so by occupying the profitable “middleman” position between producers and customers in the networks that make up our global economy. </p>
<p>These middleman positions are very profitable, based on the control they can exert over the trade flows in their network. Companies can build and maintain this position through tactically acquiring competitors – this explains the numerous mergers and takeovers that have taken place over the past decade. Acquisition strategies by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-acquisition-strategy-2013-2?IR=T">Apple</a>, <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/03/27/spending-billions-on-acquisitions-facebook-is-star.aspx">Facebook</a> and Google show how mergers and takeovers can also be used to pre-emptively counter the emergence of any potential competitor.</p>
<p>The importance of these middleman positions explains as well how companies exercise control over trade conditions in their own supply chain networks. Imposing strict costing on suppliers <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/may/30/rana-plaza-bangladesh-forced-labour-supply-chains">might cause exploitative work conditions</a> in the plants in which many of the company’s products are produced. But this enables them to keep their costs to a minimum.</p>
<p>Retail giants such as Walmart, Amazon and Tesco are well known for exercising <a href="http://www.supplychainopz.com/2014/06/supply-chain-case-study.html">close control of their supply chains</a> and for imposing trade conditions on their suppliers that allows them to operate at <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/25/walmart-human-cost-low-price-goods">lower costs than their competitors</a>. The same holds for Apple, which outsources the production of its devices to giant corporations such as Foxconn in China. This allows Apple to operate at much lower costs, increasing its profit margin.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71093/original/image-20150204-28594-sbmt4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71093/original/image-20150204-28594-sbmt4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=329&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71093/original/image-20150204-28594-sbmt4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=329&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71093/original/image-20150204-28594-sbmt4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=329&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71093/original/image-20150204-28594-sbmt4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=414&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71093/original/image-20150204-28594-sbmt4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=414&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71093/original/image-20150204-28594-sbmt4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=414&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Apple outsources its production, while maintaining control of the network.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#mediaviewer/File:Electronics_factory_in_Shenzhen.jpg">Steve Jurvetson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, positioning your company in the networks through relationships with the right partners results in more control and power to affect the business environment. Historical entrepreneurs such as John D Rockefeller were masters of developing these strategies. Rockefeller built a controlling position in the oil market at the end of the 19th century by procuring competing oil producers in the US and to integrating them into his Standard Oil corporation. </p>
<h2>Bridging networks</h2>
<p>Successful companies are adept at bridging their network with others in the global economy by exploiting things they have in common. As Ronald Burt explained in his <a href="http://www.econ.upf.edu/docs/seminars/burt.pdf">“structural holes” theory</a>, people or companies that can connect across different groups can be more creative and innovative.</p>
<p>Son Apple is able to tie different products and activities into comprehensive packages of services to their customers. Instead of just producing a personal computer or its operating software, Apple pioneered a vision of delivering the whole package of hardware and software to its customers – with great care given to design too. Although in the 1980s and 1990s this strategy was less effective and Microsoft was the more successful company, Steve Jobs’s persistence in following his vision ultimately succeeded. Indeed, Apple’s vision has become the most successful in the 21st century, since this approach is anchored in the networked nature of our global economy.</p>
<h2>Creating new networks</h2>
<p>The most successful corporations are able to create new networks through an innovative vision that executes a business strategy that fits with the prevailing philosophy of life. Apple is again the most prominent example of this aspect of entrepreneurship since it sells a world view in which hardware devices are linked with providing content in a beautiful design. Apple gets us communicating with friends through social networks, listening to music, making and modifying photographs, playing games and “looking cool” in a single vision of what a successful 21st century person aspires to.</p>
<p>Apple created new economic networks through the introduction of iTunes, their App Store, iPods, iPhones and iPads, resulting in a world view that people bought into. The latest additions to these services are the iCloud storage service and Apple Watch, which can communicate information of one’s body and health status to other devices. Then there’s Apple Pay, which will enable customers to increasingly control their finances through their Apple devices.</p>
<p>Although proposed and pioneered by others, it is Apple’s total vision of what a successful 21st century life should be that enables them to reap the profits from their products and make us <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-addiction-to-apple-is-why-its-profits-are-soaring-36854">“addicted”</a> to them.</p>
<p>It is the success of Apple in this third aspect of entrepreneurship in a network economy that sets the company apart from its competitors, and whose lead aspiring businesses should follow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Gilles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The latest round of quarterly results have recently come out and the likes of Apple and Boeing have announced bumper profits. Others such as Sainsbury’s and Samsung have not fared so well. So what is it…Rob Gilles, Professor of Theoretical Economics, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/326442014-10-09T13:41:25Z2014-10-09T13:41:25ZFireChat’s revolutionary use will not be revolutionary for long<p><a href="https://opengarden.com/firechat">FireChat</a>, the mobile phone app that allows users to communicate directly with each other through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi instead of through the existing telecoms network, has <a href="https://theconversation.com/mesh-networks-and-firechat-make-switching-off-the-internet-that-much-harder-32588">demonstrated its usefulness</a> in Hong Kong recently. </p>
<p>Besides issues of providing connectivity when phone networks are congested, circumventing censorship is also a reason for the protesters to establish their own means of networking. The FireChat app has found a use for similar reasons in countries such as Taiwan, Iran, and Syria. For the moment, it appears the authorities have not implemented a way of effectively controlling or affecting people’s use of FireChat. As long as this is the case, it’s likely to remain popular.</p>
<p>In relatively small groups of people who know each other, this kind of communication works really well. The peer-to-peer structure means no centralised infrastructure (such as the internet, or telecoms networks) is necessary. Sending every message you see to everyone you can see (“flooding”) also avoids having to find out where any particular participants are. </p>
<p>However, the history of the growth of the internet tells us that unstructured broadcast chat does not scale well to stay effective for larger groups. It’s no coincidence that <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5601586/how-to-get-started-with-usenet-in-three-simple-steps">Usenet</a>, the hierarchical structure of forum-like newsgroups that predated widespread use of the world wide web, was overtaken by the web as the internet medium of choice – at a time when there were so many posts that readers either could not keep up, or too many sub-groups were created. The <a href="http://www.okbridge.com/">first internet bridge club</a> ran essentially from a single shared chatroom, until the number of users went from a few hundreds to many thousands. <a href="http://www.livinginternet.com/d/d.htm">Text-based, multi-player internet games</a> required privilege systems and moderators to keep their chat facilities usable even when the number of users was well below 100.</p>
<p>This all points to one obvious attack on FireChat communications: the use of “noise” to drown out genuine communication, in a way analogous to a <a href="http://www.cert.org/historical/tech_tips/denial_of_service.cfm?">denial of service attack</a> on a website. FireChat has only half-hearted authentication: it asks for a genuine name and email address on registration, but makes no effort to check. So it’s easy to generate many accounts to produce an arbitrary amount of noise to drown out the signal. </p>
<p>To address some of the noise issues in the FireChat rooms, the latest version 3.0.0 introduces “moderation”. This is ultimately counter-productive, as it re-introduces a point of centralisation when the app’s selling point was its distributed nature. In fact, a system of proper authentication would also have had to find a way around this issue, as to meet the app’s promise of providing a fully separate, ad-hoc peer-to-peer network, FireChat cannot fall back on a central database of usernames and passwords.</p>
<p>Other active and passive attacks are possible. Messages sent by FireChat are not encrypted, <a href="http://breizh-entropy.org/%7Enameless/random/posts/firechat_and_nearby_communication/">so they can be easily intercepted</a> with or without the app, or even modified in transit. The app’s developers OpenGarden <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/firechat/id719829352">admit as much</a>: “Please note that FireChat is not meant for secure or private communications.” This may be the honest truth but it also undermines the “<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/06/05/could-this-app-create-a-free-secret-web/">secret web</a>” hype the app has received.</p>
<p>It’s clear that <a href="http://theconversation.com/mesh-networks-and-firechat-make-switching-off-the-internet-that-much-harder-32588">mesh networks</a> and the iPhone’s <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/03/apple-multipeer-connectivity/">Multipeer Connectivity Framework</a>, which introduces the same functionality to iOS, will lead to brilliant new applications. Meanwhile FireChat has its issues, some of them easier to resolve than others. In the end this may not matter.</p>
<p>Another lesson from computing history is that the most sophisticated or secure technology does not always win in the long run. For uses like recently in Hong Kong, the obvious flaws of FireChat do not matter so long as the authorities are not trying to exploit them. Even then, by the time they do FireChat may have served its purpose. As in writer Cory Doctorow’s <a href="http://craphound.com/littlebrother/">Little Brother</a>, the “subversives” only ever need to be one step ahead in technology.</p>
<p><em>Research and contributions to this article from Oliver Florence, studying cybersecurity at the University of Kent.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eerke Boiten is a senior lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Kent, and Director of the University&#39;s interdisciplinary Centre for Cyber Security Research. He receives funding from EPSRC for the CryptoForma Network of Excellence on Cryptography and Formal Methods. He is a member of BCS and board member of its specialist group on Formal Aspects of Computer Science. He is also a director (governor) of The John of Gaunt School, a Community Academy.</span></em></p>FireChat, the mobile phone app that allows users to communicate directly with each other through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi instead of through the existing telecoms network, has demonstrated its usefulness in…Eerke Boiten, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing and Director of Interdisciplinary Cyber Security Centre, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/325882014-10-06T15:32:32Z2014-10-06T15:32:32ZMesh networks and Firechat make 'switching off the internet' that much harder<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60927/original/7yp7rq2t-1412608274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The app that&#39;s been lighting a fire under Hong Kong protests.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">OpenGarden.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The events in Hong Kong have seen technology play a huge role in organising political protest, as much as in the days of <a href="https://www.westminster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/220675/WPCC-vol9-issue2.pdf">the Arab Spring</a> of 2011. But governments have become wise to the potential influence of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and blocking websites is easy (if you’re the government).</p>
<p>The <a href="http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/what-the-arab-spring-tells-us-about-the-future-of-social-media-in-revolutionary-movements">technology</a> now wielded by the students and protesters in Hong Kong has evolved. The Firechat app isn’t connected to a centralised service or website through which its messages are routed. Instead, each phone running the Firechat app acts as a node in a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27225869">mesh network</a>, passing messages node to node, from origin to destination. In this way, the messages cannot easily be blocked.</p>
<p>This is quite different to the way mobile phone networks function. The by-and-large excellent coverage we enjoy is possible because the network providers – such as Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, EE and Three in the UK – have spent many millions setting up base stations across the globe. Although the protocols differ between networks and have evolved over time (GSM, EDGE, 3G, 4G) they all work in a similar way: the base station forwards traffic from the phone, towards the intended destination. This does mean, however, that base station failures can severely disrupt communications. </p>
<h2>Mesh for resilience</h2>
<p>Ad-hoc mesh networks such as Firechat uses take an alternative approach. Instead of routing traffic through base stations, they allow nearby mobile phones to communicate directly with each other – what is called peer-to-peer networking. </p>
<p>This model has many benefits, including lower costs and higher performance. They have found a variety of purposes over recent years, largely in bringing low-cost internet connectivity to areas that are not well provided for – whether in <a href="http://www.share4dev.info/kb/documents/4780.pdf">Africa</a> or <a href="http://hebnet.co.uk/">western Scotland</a>, or <a href="http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/research/projects/ngn/slides/msn08talks/ishmael_ulanc.pdf">northern England</a>. They are also used to deploy free, community wireless networks in cities, popular in <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Germany</a>, and also available in <a href="http://www.bristolwireless.net/">Bristol</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=305&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=305&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=305&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=383&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=383&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60929/original/mmxnyts5-1412608406.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=383&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If you want to take it down, you have to take them all down.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OpenGarden.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The key property of mesh networking is its resilience: with no reliance on base stations, ad-hoc mesh networks can stay up and functional even when some or many nodes are off. This makes them difficult to shut down in an <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8288163/How-Egypt-shut-down-the-internet.html">easy, kill-switch fashion</a>. This has made it of interest to the military and also to disaster response agencies.</p>
<p>Instead of attacking the base stations used by standard mobile networks, it would probably be necessary to use some sort of jamming signal, broadcasting powerful radio signals to disrupt the mesh network over specific geographic areas. If you want a live demonstration, try this: put your wireless internet-connected phone next to the microwave and turn it on. Wi-Fi uses the same radio spectrum as a microwave, and 850W of nearby microwave interference will be enough to damage your phone’s chance of communicating clearly with your home base station.</p>
<h2>Missing features</h2>
<p>Firechat uses these aspects of mesh networking to its advantage and the protesters have used Firechat to theirs. It’s also found strong followings in <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/06/05/could-this-app-create-a-free-secret-web/">Taiwan</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/24/firechat-updates-as-40000-iraqis-download-mesh-chat-app-to-get-online-in-censored-baghdad">Iraq</a>, Syria and Egypt. The app has been downloaded 4m times from one Chinese app store alone (Tencent).</p>
<p><a href="https://opengarden.com/firechat">Firechat</a> allows three different types of messaging. The Everyone mode is like talking in an open chat room, where a limited number of people can interact based only on their proximity to each other. The Nearby mode allows users to find others close by. The Firechat mode is a chat room based on a single topic.</p>
<p>While popular, no approach is perfect and FireChat has already had several issues identified. For example, the highly open nature of communications, with nearby users all part of the same “conversation”, brings with it problems of privacy and anonymity. There is no encryption or user authentication – and while this makes it easy to set up and use, it means all communication is open to eavesdropping, or raises problems of users masquerading as people they’re not. </p>
<p>Firechat’s developers have even openly said that it is not a tool for communicating sensitive information. As with everything, the devil is therefore in the detail and users should be aware of its limitations. Nevertheless, it is an important development towards ensuring that the power and reach of the internet is democratised and cannot be switched off by the powerful at the expense of the people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gareth Tyson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The events in Hong Kong have seen technology play a huge role in organising political protest, as much as in the days of the Arab Spring of 2011. But governments have become wise to the potential influence…Gareth Tyson, Lecturer in electronic engineering and computer science, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.